The Magpies
by Knight in Blackest Armor
Summary: With the technologies of several alien races at its disposal, humanity had undergone a technological revolution. It advanced at such a rapid pace, far exceeding many expectations. Soon however, the humans learned that they shared their galaxy with yet another group of sentient alien life, but to mankind's horror and confusion, these aliens were not the sort they expected at all.
1. Ashes to Ashes

Aw, hell. Looks like people had already beaten me to the punch, but I'll post this thing anyway. One thing of note, this story's timeline will begin at the start of the Bureau: XCOM Declassified, so to those who haven't played the (slightly above average) game yet, you might want to avert your eyes starting from 1961 to 2015. Anyways, enjoy!

**...**

**|Please input your identification name and number. This terminal is secured under security protocol 10178-4692, implemented August 03, 2053.|**

**- comm officer**** romuald wyczolkowski/co-7234-1111**

**|Analyzing inputted text... analyzed. Welcome, BASE OPERATIVE: WYCZOLKOWSKI, ROMUALD. What would you have this system do?|**

**- access file #83664674**

**|Loading file… please wait…|**

**93%... _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/**

**|Warning. File corruption detected, possible outside tampering detected, multiple unregistered programs detected. Your file is incomplete by an estimated 7.0563%. The Director would like to extend his apologies for your inconvenience.|**

**- ****troubleshoot/run file/input date: a-1961-j-2157**

**|Understood. Running…|**

**Timeline of events starting from: 1961, AUGUST to 2157, JUNE**

**August 30, 1961**: Elerium 115 had been unwittingly discovered by the French scientific community. The discovery of this 'super-element' was hastily covered up by the Council of Nations before being sent to an undisclosed location for study.

**February 29, 1962**: It was the height of the Cold War between the United States and the USSR. Prior to the significant series of events that changed the face of the world, President John F. Kennedy of the United States gave the order to authorize the formation of the Bureau of Operations and Command, led by Director Myron Faulke. Originally an organization intended to coordinate American military forces in the event of a Soviet assault on US soil, instead of being sent off to fight the Russians, the Bureau found itself as a bulwark against a more powerful, more insidious threat than communism: the Outsiders.

The Outsiders were a hostile extraterrestrial force composed of a myriad of alien species, but most prominently, the zudjari species. Disgraced CIA Agent William Carter played a crucial role in winning humanity's first contact war with the extraterrestrial forces, but he was of questionable mental health. In the end, Agent Carter was executed for****#########**DATA CORRUPTED**#########****and Faulke was possessed by an ethe****#########**DATA CORRUPTED**#########****tsider forces were forced to stand down and assist in rebuilding before being exterminated to the last.

Numerous scientific and military advances were made thanks to preserved Outsider technology, but advanced "world-changing" technology such as plasma and beam weapons, alien warmachines, computers and aircraft were destroyed. Every single piece of evidence pertaining to a covert alien invasion of Earth were erased from history, with only Bureau personnel and top world leaders as the sole keepers of the knowledge of how humanity narrowly avoided extinction. Finally, the sleepwal****#########**DATA CORRUPTED**#########****not be treated, even with Dr. Alan Weir's assistance. They were left in hospitals for the remainder of their lives.

The Bureau was nearly destroyed in an earlier Outsider attack on their headquarters, but the organization clung to life. Soon, it was rechristened as the Extraterrestrial Combat Unit, or XCOM.

**April 11, 1964**: Director Faulke parted ways with the etheri****#########**DATA CORRUPTED**#########****ffering from the trauma he was put through, Faulke shot himself in his office. Senior Agent Angela Weaver was named as the new director.

**May 19, 1964**: Director Weaver leaves office after being judged as mentally unstable, letting Dr. Weir take her place. She was killed after the plane she was taking, United Airlines Flight 823, crashed near Parrotsville, Tennessee after an onboard fire, which was later found out to be induced deliberately.

**December 09, 1967**: The last of the sleepwalkers were euthanized after a lengthy debate on whether letting them live was a decision that could still be considered merciful. In total, fifteen thousand people died to the sleepwalker virus. Relatives of the deceased were allowed to mourn privately, and were made to promise an oath of secrecy as to the precise details of how their loved ones died.

**October 17, 1974**: By now, the entirety of North Vietnam is under combined American and South Vietnamese control. Armed with advanced ultramodern equipment and ballistics weaponry reverse-engineered from Outsider technology, the US army utterly crushed their Viet Cong opponents, stamping out yet another communist insurgency, much to Director Weir's disapproval. News agencies and other militaries around the world tirelessly searched for the source of the US military's recent advances in technology, but XCOM undercover agents kept them at bay with false information and fake leads.

**January 01, 1984**: An attempted takeover of XCOM Headquarters by a disgraced former field agent calling himself "Big Brother" was easily foiled. Security in and around the base's perimeter has been increased by 150% as a result.

**March 01, 2015**: The XCOM Initiative has been reactivated once more, on the grounds of another, less covert extraterrestrial incursion. It was unknown at first, but discerning from recovered alien wreckage, crashed ship logs and captured alien personnel, the aliens - led by the Ethereal Ones - were trying to "uplift" humanity for "what lies ahead". During the invasion, XCOM Director Dietrich Thierfelder copied the Bureau's tactics (reverse-engineering salvaged technology from the aliens) to maximum effect, while simultaneously trying to keep the public unaware of XCOM's existence. The bulk of Earth's militaries did most of the heavy fighting, while elite XCOM field agents attacked weak spots in the alien warmachine and performed crucial operations that other human parties could not do themselves.

During the course of the invasion, an ancient organization calling itself EXALT rose up, with the purpose of aiding the aliens in their goal in their bid to assume control of the world.

**May 24, 2016**: By now, almost all of Earth's beleaguered militaries were now equipped with reverse-engineered plasma weaponry and rudimentary powered exoskeletons, with limited access to the creation of MEC troopers. Humans are now evenly matched against the ethereal threat, but Director Thierfelder could not help but feel anxious about the ethereals, and how they seemed to be holding back their most powerful weapons.

**September 08, 2016**: EXALT has been thrown out from play after XCOM field agents ransacked their hidden headquarters in Japan. Priceless works of stolen or lost art were given back to their rightful owners, or were donated to collectors for funding. Salvaged EXALT tech were supplied to Earth's militaries, since they were inferior to XCOM's own. However, EXALT research concerning super-advanced gene mods were destroyed, on ethical grounds.

**December 03, 2016**: XCOM agents assaulted and cleared the aliens' headquarters, which was later found out to be just an outpost. However, new technology salvaged from the base helped Dr. Viktoria Vahlen discover psionic potential in humans. Captain Ferdinand Schultz was the first human psionic, followed by Director Thierfelder himself as the second human psionic.

**March 12, 2017**: As dubbed by Central Officer Bradford, the "Temple Ship" that the aliens have been using as their headquarters had been marked for death by the director. Three days later, four squads of XCOM's most talented and most elite troopers were deployed inside the ship, with Colonel Schultz as the designated Volunteer. Fighting their way across the long corridors of the Temple Ship, only four soldiers ever made it to the alien leader - the Uber Ethereal. After killing the last of the ethereals, the Temple Ship unleashed massive amounts of dark energy, which could have turned the ship into a black hole, consuming the planet below it whole. For reasons only the three surviving veterans of that battle knew, the Temple Ship inexplicably flew into space, where it detonated in a much less spectacular fireball. Colonel Schultz was presumed killed in action, and his family was informed of the circumstances of his death almost immediately. The petition to turn March 12 into a global holiday by an overenthusiastic American politician has been turned down for security and secrecy reasons. Within months, the leaderless remnants of the alien invasion had been fought off.

Director Thierfelder went against the decision to confiscate or destroy alien technology this time, his reasons being that if aliens attack once more, Earth's defenders will be ready. Soldiers in Titan Armor, holding plasma rifles were now a common sight, and along with reprogrammed Sectopods and Cyberdisks, they patrolled the ruined streets, serving as the temporary lawmen to restore order from the chaos that is the Great Ethereal War. Scores and scores of alien bodies and salvaged technologies in the field of cybernetics were donated to colleges, scientific communities and medical institutions, bringing in new wonders through their inventions, making life significantly easier for everyone. Spaceflight-capable ships reverse-engineered from alien tech soared across Earth's skies, keeping an eye out for anymore alien incursions. Drs. Vahlen and Shen continued their in-depth study of alien technology, and soon, human technology found itself flung forwards by several centuries, ushering in a new technological "Golden Age".

**November 10, 2018**: Production of MEC troopers had been halted this day. Already, significant improvements upon the brave volunteers' base augments have been made, allowing them to live their lives more or less normally, but with many more disadvantages still, with the most persistent being that MEC veterans can't taste food very well, and they don't have a sense of touch. As a result, MEC troopers have been extremely militaristic as of late, reminiscing fondly of the "good old days".

**September 30, 2019**: By this year, Earth's forces have phased out the tank, favoring manned armored walker designs based on the Sectopod, with focus on size increases and armament improvements. In large numbers, the Lotus, an unmanned attack drone design based on the original Cyberdisk, had been deployed in orbit of Earth and the Moon, acting as the first line of defense against another alien invasion. On a side note, "Alien Alloy" has been formally named as Ilyushinite Alloy, in honor of the first XCOM agent to die, after a means to produce them in large quantities was found.

**March 02, 2024**: With aid from superior technology and weapons systems, South Korea takes over North Korea, after the latter provoked the former with frequent aerial bombardments using obsolete, 21st century weapons technology. Everyone in the world laughed at the bested country's expense.

**February 16, 2025**: A new headquarters to house XCOM personnel on the Sea of Tranquility on the Moon had begun construction. It was planned to be used as the organization's main HQ, in addition to serving as a training ground for new XCOM operatives, and a factory for making Crusaders (a new breed of Sectopod) and Voidlances (an improved version of the Firestorm). Construction of the base, as usual, had been done in secret.

**August 18, 2029**: This day, it had been discovered that the alien substance "Meld" possesses some harmful properties, which resulted in a quarter of the Great Ethereal War veterans developing a debilitating amount of diseases, which resulted in quite a few deaths. However, with recent advances in gene modification technology, the Meld Recombination Project has been improved in every way, resulting in more powerful gene mods with less adverse effects. Still, Meld is considered a dangerous substance, only to be handled by qualified personnel.

**October 05, 2030**: A third World War had been narrowly avoided today. Terrorists planted and detonated a plasma bomb in Marseille, France a week ago. The explosion destroyed the city utterly, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians and destroying several trillion euros worth of property. Several pieces of evidence found at the site of the explosion implied that the US government, supported by the Russian government, had organized the attack, for seemingly no reason at all. XCOM agents covertly investigated the area of the explosion and found enough evidence to condemn the attack as part of an EXALT-made ploy to start a nuclear apocalypse. Disguised as French officials, another group of XCOM operatives exposed the evidence their colleagues found. The French people withdrew their accusations against the United States and the Russian Federation before swearing vengeance against EXALT. Supplies, construction materials and monetary support from XCOM were secretly handed out to the French government, under the guise of extremely wealthy entrepreneurs.

**December 25, 2034**: After finally undoing the damage done to Earth in 2031, the world's governments had made the decision to turn their gaze skywards, with plans to coalesce every government into a single governing body in the future. In Christmas Day, 2034, the first colonization attempts were made in Mars, just a year after constructions on Schultz Base on the Moon were finished. Everything seems to be going smoothly so far, but no one was prepared for the discovery that the terraformers in Mars had found, several years later; an alien facility sporting an aesthetic design much more different than those of ethereal architecture. What followed was the shortest recorded reactivation of the XCOM Project. From 2035 to 2040, volunteers for the MEC Trooper Project and the Gene Aug Project have both increased from nonexistence to 40% and 55% respectively.

Before anyone else could get access to the facility, several teams of veterans from the Great Ethereal War had already dropped on Mars, via Voidranger. They were sporting enough equipment to be considered a small army, but once they managed to get inside the facility itself, they were relieved to find that it was abandoned, most likely from several thousand years ago. Inside the facility is the famous Mars Archive, where XCOM field scientists learned everything about the creators of the facility, which was another alien species called "protheans". Soon, the facility and the area around it were declared off-limits to civilians, with the guards having authorization for lethal applications of force.

**April 22, 2036**: Dr. Raymond Shen passed away in his sleep. XCOM forces everywhere in mourning. Dr. Markus Wallis replaced the good doctor as XCOM's chief engineer.

Weeks later, a way to replicate Elerium 115 in vast quantities was implemented using Dr. Shen's research notes, posthumously accomplishing the doctor's goal.

**January 07, 2037**: After continued deciphering and studying of the prothean ruins on Mars, XCOM scientists have discovered a warning from the protheans themselves. Apparently, they were wiped out by a machine race of sentient starships called the Reapers, and they left pieces of their own technology to help anyone who found the ruins in the next "cycle". Director Thierfelder didn't take the warning seriously, dismissing it as a long-past threat. However, with his approval, reverse-engineering and implementation of prothean technology was started. Another technological revolution was kicked off, but most of the protheans' technology was considered inferior to what humanity already has, especially in terms of weaponry and equipment. Fortunately, some of the protheans' technologies could be used for civilian and law enforcement use. Additionally, a new element, dubbed "Element Zero" (Element One was proposed, but it was turned down because Hydrogen was already Element One), was implemented into existing human technologies, after its ability to change mass after being exposed to electromagnetic fields proved indispensably useful.

Dir. Thierfelder, after hearing about the report about a massive artificial construct orbiting Pluto, considered taking the object apart for study, but upon hearing about the report that entailed that the structure is impenetrable to concentrated fusion lance broadsides and volleys of blaster launcher blasts, he had decided to leave it alone for now.

**October 01, 2041**: The Mars terraforming program has been completed. Mars is now housing several hundred thousand people looking for a place to start anew, but the Mars Archive is still considered off-limits to civilians, but with the "shoot on sight" policy being rescinded. This is the only instance where civilians can see XCOM operatives in plain view, but the Archive personnel were still on orders to keep their mouths shut about what they are or who they worked for.

**November 04, 2041**: In the next month, after discussing plans to retire and settle down with his wife and children, Dir. Thierfelder ordered a flotilla of Order-class cruisers to escort an Everest-class "dreadnought", the very first of its kind, to explore the construct orbiting Pluto. After an accident with the ship controls, one of the Orders, the _Paulus Augustus,_ veered off-course, straight to the construct's rotating rings. What followed next could only be described as horrifying as the cruiser appeared to have been "sling-shotted forwards to hell" as one of the ensigns in the dreadnought wrote in his report. Everyone assumed the worst, but then suddenly, the _Augustus_ reappeared next to the construct, seemingly no worse for wear.

On the crew of the cruiser's report, they said that they were propelled to another part of space, right next to another, similar looking construct. They immediately repeated their actions after concluding that the construct must be what the protheans used for FTL travel. Dr. Viktoria V. Thierfelder, in collaboration with Dr. Hongou Marazuki, dubbed the construct as a "mass relay", that functions just like how the Mars Archive described it on its respective article; as a means for faster-than-light travel, using copious amounts of Element Zero as a main power source.

On a more serious note, EXALT forces have turned a lot more aggressive as of late.

**February 18, 2042**: Director Thierfelder retired from XCOM, along with his wife, leaving his eldest son as the only member of the Thierfelder family still in XCOM's ranks. The iconic duo were replaced with Jonathan Cross as director, and Dr. Reginald Powers as chief scientific researcher. As of now, Venus, Ganymede, Callisto, Titan, Europa and Mars were already inhabited by small settlements of humans, with each planet/moon having two hundred units of Lotus attack drones as protection from possible ethereal comebacks. Also, every single family of colonists that expressed the desire to possess firearms to protect their loved ones needed to pass a test to determine if they're capable of handling a single Sunray laser rifle, which is mostly just for self-defense from fellow humans and morale than actual weapons that could damage Ilyushinite alloy armor. Humanity continues to grow and expand, with the intention of becoming as great and powerful as the protheans had described themselves as, and with the intention of avoiding the same fate, if the Reapers ever come.

**June 04, 2079**: Human growth is steadily increasing. Cities have sprouted up and taken the place of towns in colonized planets. Recently rediscovered Outsider technology paired with plenty of time added more than a few advances in the indefatigable advance of human technology. The combined human military might amounted to several millions of soldiers, whether they be regular humans, augmented humans, Gifted humans or MEC troopers, be they part of the regular Earth militaries, or they're working for XCOM. Humans are now fielding different types of starships, such as frigates, cruisers, battleships, spaceborne fighter carriers and dreadnoughts, as based on prothean and ethereal designs.

In addition to these starship types, humanity had also created its own ship classes, like the hiveship, which is a medium-sized ship outfitted with several drop pods, an entire wing of Voidrangers and a respectable amount of Canary plasma assault cannons, or the terrifying, cruiser-sized devilship, which is armed with a dizzying amount of hull-mounted Unmaker blaster launchers all over its sides, in addition to being plated in refined Ilyushinite alloys. The most revered ship in the fleet, the Cthulhu-class dreadnought, is a monster of a starship. There might just be a single Cthulhu as of now, but it stretched for almost 3.75/4 of the Temple Ship's original size, built around an oversized, 3-kilometer version of the Godfinger-pattern fusion lance, and it sported plasma precision cannons mounted on both sides of its hull. It was even capable of defacing entire landmasses on planets with a single discharge from its fusion lance. Last but not least, exclusive to XCOM is the Dietrich-class fighter, which is what XCOM hunter-carriers used to do their job: the disablement of enemy ships, followed by capture. The Dietrich is both armed with EMP cannons and more conventional plasma cannons. Whenever a hunter-carrier is around, it is usually accompanied by a flotilla of hiveships.

**December 27, 2083**: After Mark P. Bradford's death a year earlier, Dietrich L. Thierfelder dies of natural causes, having lived a good, world-saving (but sadly, classified) life. Dr. Viktoria V. Thierfelder died two days later. XCOM personnel briefly powered down all their facilities, left their stations and sang a song in honor of the people whom many considered as their heroes; Vigilant, reliable, fearless and immovable in the face of the extraterrestrial tide.

_He was getting old and paunchy, and his hair is falling fast,_

_and he sat around the Hologlobe telling stories of his past._

_Of the war he had fought in and the deeds that he had done._

_In his exploits with his agents they were heroes, everyone._

_And though sometimes, to his kids, his tales became a joke,_

_all his agents listened, for they knew whereof he spoke._

_But we'll hear his tales no longer, for the ol' commander passed away,_

_and the world's a little poorer for its hero died today._

**August 30, 2112**: The last "regular" veteran of the Great Ethereal War had died. Recent advances in MEC trooper technology had allowed the human body to remain limbed to pilot a Mechanized Exoskeleton Cybersuit. Limbless veteran pilots of the old MEC models were given advanced base augments that allowed them to feel as if they weren't limbless anymore. Psionic training facilities have become commonplace in a typical human environment, where Gifted humans were taught to properly control their Gift, either in pursuit of their chosen profession, or to enlist in the military as a combat psionic. Gene modded humans have been observed to age significantly slower than unaugmented humans, but the cost of gene mods, the difficult implementation process and possible discrimination from regular humans kept applicants for gene mods just in the tens of thousands, instead of the expected millions.

**June 25, 2157**: Acting over a century-old plan, humanity's governments had relinquished control of their countries over to a single governing body to administrate the human race - the Federation of Man. Using mass relays to propel themselves forward, humans have left their home system in order to expand. Over the course of several decades, humanity now stands massively stronger than it once was in 2015. Current XCOM Director, Tyrone Faust, had theorized that if the ethereals tried attacking humanity now, they would be effectively eradicated from existence over the course of a single year. Still, there had been no contact from extraterrestrial life, which some had considered as a blessing.

On the other hand, roving asteroid miners from Shanxi, the most populous colonized planet outside the Sol System, had reported that there had been some strange readings coming from the nearby mass relay. As a precaution, Director Faust posted two Amerigo-class science ships escorted by four devilships to the erratically-behaving relay.

**|End of file. Power this system down? Y/N|**

**...**

**_XSV Indigo, Shanxi-Theta Relay_**

**_July 02nd, 2157_**

**_Captain Joachim Granger, XCOM commander of the S:E17 detachment to Shanxi_ - _Section E:17__  
_**

"What the bloody hell?!"

The alien ships just in front of Granger's fired broadsides, forcefully sending the _Indigo _shaking and dropping its shields down to 67%. Granger held on to his station's railing to prevent himself from falling flat on the floor.

"Holy hell, X-RAYS! We've got contacts, x-ray cruisers on approach! Two hundred Ks to the west, forty five contacts in total!" Rodriguez, the _Indigo_'s chief sensor officer shouted as loud as he could, letting the crew know about the gravity of the situation they're in. "Sir, what do we do now?!"

Granger gaped at the numbers on the sensor screen. 45:6 isn't a good ratio to be. He left the railing and righted his hat. "Christ's blood, tell the devilship captains to form up on us. We're getting the hell out of here."

"Aye aye, sir!" Rodriguez immediately responded before resuming his duties over at his console. "Attention all ships, in case you haven't noticed yet, we're under attack! Have your ship regroup on the _Indigo_, we're falling back to Shanx-"

The alien ships fired again. This time, the projectiles broke through the_ Indigo's _shields and gutted her unfortunate sister ship, the _Henriette. _An explosion tore through the _Indigo_ causing more than a few hull breaches and causing Rodriguez to break his neck after his head was plunged into his own console. The devilships returned fire, causing damage of their own, but they were forced to turn around and fall back, just as the enemy cruisers prepared to fire another volley. Granger was just about to sound a full retreat, when the inevitable came.

Granger was knocked to the floor from the impact. His vision is blurry around the edges, his body felt white hot lances of pain dancing all over it, and the screams and shouts of his crew overwhelmed his hearing before slowly fading in intensity. His last conscious thought was that despite everything that happened today, he was honored.

Honored to be one of the first humans to initiate a successful by-the-book contact with an extraterrestrial force in the last century and a half.

Out with a bang.

**...**

**_HWS Disciple of Marr, Shanxi-Theta Relay_**

**_July 02nd, 2157_**

**_Captain Meril Regulus, captain of the HWS _Disciple of Marr_ - Draius Ferlodinus Legion_**

"Very interesting..." Captain Regulus muttered as his command ship passed through the wreckage of the destroyed alien ships. Earlier, he was incensed that two of the Spirits-damned ships got away, and that they took eight of his own cruisers before escaping, but since he's now got his talons on some potentially game-changing technology, his anger quickly faded away. It appears that even with their obvious weakness in commanding their ships, these aliens undeniably possessed an advanced form of anti-ship technology, as well as a significantly durable type of ship armored plating.

"Navigator, put us nice and close near the wreckage." He quietly ordered, never taking his eyes off the ruined alien cruisers. "Have the salvage team suited up for a quick salvage run. The Heirarchy is going to _like _this."

The turian shipmaster watched with interest as his men emerged out of his ship in a shuttle. After arriving on a slightly damaged hull-mounted weapon, the salvage crew promptly left their shuttle and began working.

"Captain, we're dismantling the alien weapon, as you ordered." A lieutenant reported to Regulus. "This might take some time, though."

Regulus' mandibles clicked once and formed a turian frown. "It's alright, take your time. We should have all the time in the-"

A loud beeping sound interrupted the captain. It was coming from the salvage team's radio. "What's that, lieutenant? Found something significant?"

"I don't know, sir." The soldier reported back. "The whole ship seems to be-"

Regulus immediately knew what was going on. However, before he could so much as curse loudly, him and his whole ship were erased from existence by a plasma bomb, utterly destroying the wreckage of the ship and destroying any sort of functioning tech. Immediately after, the rest of the destroyed alien ships did the same, taking those unfortunate enough to be near them in death.

The surviving turians could only look on in horror as their victory turned sour on their mouths.

**...**

Hornet07: The above **400-word** "battle" is not a real battle. It's played for drama. Canon dictates that the human explorers didn't notice the turians until they were fired upon, and I'm inclined to follow that in this story. Besides, since XCOM is such a xenophobic organization, if they spotted the turians first, they'd fire. No hesitation, and that would probably ruin my ideas. And since when did I wrote that the devilships, which are military escort ships coated in Alien Alloy, went BEHIND the science ships, which are non-combatant ships with no armor and weaponry whatsoever? _Ugh_._  
_

Despite what you probably think, I do have some modicum of common sense when I write.


	2. Dust to Dust

**_Sea of Tranquillity, The Moon_**

**_XCOM HQ, July 03rd, 2157_**

**_Director Tyrone Faust – Commander of XCOM_**

It's just another day at the office in Schultz Base. Director Faust relaxed on his office seat, a Cuban-made cigarette in one hand, and a news datapad on the other, with a feed cutting directly into the latest news from all over human-owned space. _This has got to be the easiest job available to man_. The African-American-born director thought. In a way, that line of thought rang true. Since Director Thierfelder's retirement, all of his successors found themselves having an easier time doing their jobs, since most of their work is already done for them. Truly, the man is the king of all workaholics.

"_-tizens cheer as the Russian-funded armament producer Rosenkov Materials unveiled their newest product to the general public: the Knight-Inquisitor Combat Exoskeleton. The KICE is purported to be able to be worn in any environment without sacrificing the ability to effectively protect the wearer from small-arms fire from both directed energy weapons and replica prothean-based projectile spewing firearms. Already, several Federation divisions and more than a few mercenary companies are-"_

Faust was shaken out of his peaceful reverie when the voice from his datapad was suddenly cut off, a disturbing amount of static taking its place. He tried manually restarting the datapad, but the static persisted. He then tried switching from program to program, but all the programs were displaying the same amount of static as the next one. Just as he was about to shrug his shoulders and give up, another program suddenly appeared on the datapad, with a man in a brown business suit dominating the screen. On the background are some rifle-wielding, power armored soldiers, standing straight like statues.

"Listen up, people of the Federation!" The man appeared severely stressed out, with red veins contrasting with the white of his eyes, and the bedraggled, crinkled look of his suit. "This is an emergen-," He stammered." An emergency b- broadcast coming from the Federation government. There has been a reported a- attack against an unidentified human group of ships just at the area of the Shanxi-Theta Relay, and from what the survivors of the beleaguered ships reported, they were apparently assaulted by another group of ships belonging to," The man appeared to hesitate, and he appeared more agitated just as he said the word, "Extraterrestrials."

Faust's cigarette slipped from his mouth, just as it dropped open. On the other hand, his grip on the datapad might end up breaking it to pieces from the sheer crippling force his mechanical hand applied.

"Yes, folks. You heard me." The man's agitated look disappeared, being replaced with restrained fury. "Humanity is in the brink of another alien invasion." He accentuated the last two words of the sentence. "Just when we thought we'd finally be free from the cruelties of other sentient life, here comes another race that wanted to kill us for the heinous crime of simply existing. Already, the survivors reported that four hundred and eighty seven human souls have been killed by alien hands. Dear citizens of the Federation… I urge you to-"

The strength that Faust held the datapad finally caused it to break. Without any more hesitation, the director stomped out of his quarters and strode off to the briefing hall.

Putting a hand to his ear, Faust broadcasted his voice to every room, every corner in Schultz Base. "Everyone," He spoke, his voice already echoing from all the intercoms of XCOM HQ. "A meeting in the briefing hall is in order. Let it be known that this day, the XCOM Project… is _online_."

**…**

"Sir!" A MEC-wearing agent saluted Faust as he passed by, the agent's servos whirring as she moved. Once Faust was close enough, the MEC agent held the steel briefing hall doors open for her director.

Faust gave the agent a grim nod before heading in. He was greeted by the sight of seven thousand of his soldiers and subordinates seated all over the briefing hall, earnestly waiting for his instructions. Most of the operatives wore serious, professional faces, some looked quite passive, and some appeared to be ready to burst out of the hall, ready to kill, but all of them had undoubtedly already heard the news; XCOM is needed.

The director strode off to his place in the northernmost section of the hall, which is guarded by six stiff-looking operatives in full Colossus armor, which is an improved, fully sealed version of the obsolete Titan armor. In a way, they looked like miniature versions of MEC troopers.

Faust took his position, the hall remained deathly silent. He cleared his throat before talking.

"I'm sure… you've already heard of the ill tidings from Shanxi that had made its way to the mainstream news broadcasts. And I'm also sure that you already know about what I'm going to say," The director glared at his audience as he brought his Wallis-pattern omni-tool up, which was designed and conventionalized by the late Dr. Wallis in the 2030s by using prothean designs. Instead of having an orange glow, it was glowing the typical XCOM color – a bluish green hue.

The omni-tool displayed the full broadcast on the new alien threat. The camera is currently viewing the devastation that the aliens wrought on the surviving devilships, which had obvious hastily patched up holes, torn bulkheads and weld marks all over it, making it look like a badly produced second-hand ship, not a top-of-the-line XCOM-made cruiser. The camera then focused on the XCOM crew, which were trying their very best to lie about their line of work, and the purpose of their visit of the relay.

"As you can see, the ships from Section 17 I've sent to scout the relay near Shanxi have been struck by an extraterrestrial force," Some murmurs were muttered all along the hall. Faust continued, "None of the science ships survived, only two of the devilships – the _Messenger_ and the _Herald_. Knowing Captain Granger, he should have triggered the self-destruct mechanism on his ship just before it went down, so that aliens might not try _our_ tactic against us."

The camera then cut the feed of the surviving ships from S:17, focusing instead on an interview of a Federation Navy official. The official is dressed in the garb of an admiral, but strangely, he does not have any sort of medals pinned to his chest.

"Viewers, this is Admiral Draynor, in command of the _FNWS Annihilation_, the very first Cthulhu-class dreadnought. Admiral, what does the Federation has to say to the claims that humanity is in the brink of another alien attack?" The newswoman asked, a bit of forced enthusiasm in her tone.

The admiral looked at the camera pointed towards him in a scrutinizing glare. He inhaled sharply before speaking, "If this is truly the time for war yet again, then the Federation Navy would get there first. If Shanxi is about to be defiled by alien claws, its citizens could rest easy, knowing that the _Annihilation _would be there with them." The newswoman gasped audibly. Admiral Draynor gave the camera a smirk before continuing, "Federation HICOM wanted the aliens to know just how hospitable us humans could be for the likes of them, and the _Annihilation_'s crew is inclined to do just that, with several salvos of our Godfinger fusion lance, of course." Then, the admiral's friendly smile disappeared, as he looked further into the camera.

"Of course, the Federation Navy wouldn't be in the thick of it alone. I've heard some old friends are coming to help as well…"

Some of the veterans of the Great Ethereal War snickered on their seats, but the MEC troopers gave up on subtlety and just laughed loudly. Director Faust rolled his eyes and brought his omni-tool down.

"We're officially at war, people. Like what our good "friend" in the Federation said, they'll be the main combatants in Shanxi, if the aliens decided to push on."

"What are we supposed to do then, sir?" One of the newer operatives shouted from the back of the hall.

"What else, soldier? Like what our predecessors did, XCOM is gonna be _right there_ with the main force, and we'll sure as hell gonna make sure they damn well win." Faust made his way down his platform. "I want everybody geared up for ship-boarding action. We just got ourselves into another war, but this time… we'll be the bad guys."

**…**

**_HWS Indefatigable, 600km to Shanxi-Theta Relay_**

**_July 04th, 2157_**

**_Admiral Aureliana Nadrakan, admiral in charge of the Turian Expeditionary Force to Relay 314 – Draius Ferlodinus Legion_**

"Ma'am, all ships reporting for duty, ready for combat." The senior comm officer reported. From the tinge of his high-pitched, shrilly voice, he sounds like he's going to explode in excitement. This must be his first engagement. "They're ready to enter the relay. Just say the word."

Admiral Aureliana, or "Lina", to those whom she called friend, ran both of her hands on her head crest as she relaxed on her seat. An ignorant alien race had the audacity to activate a primary relay just when it's most likely their first time out of their home planet, and now, Palaven High Command wants them taught a lesson, with Lina's fleet of 450 ships as the vanguard.

Accompanied by his brother, General Desolas Arterius would be leading the ground force, after Lina's fleet had dealt with the enemy warships in orbit of their objective: the colony of "Shanxi" from what little information they took from the alien wreckage that Captain Regulus had the misfortune of joining.

Lina sighed. She couldn't bring it upon herself to like the Arterius brothers for many reasons, chief among them is the fact that Desolas is such an impassive, unfeeling career soldier that can't do anything much beyond commanding and soldiering, and Saren's inherent eeriness. For some reason, Lina couldn't help but feel unsettled when she's around the younger Arterius.

"Alright, lieutenant," Lina spoke up once she was sitting comfortably on her seat. "Tell the shipmasters to follow us. Navigator, set a course for Shanxi, but stay near the relay, we need to have the fleet regrouped once we arrive in the system."

A chorus of affirmatives rang throughout the command bridge. "Is there anything else we need to worry about, ma'am?" The senior officer asked, smiling roguishly.

"Nothing at all." Lina replied dismissively, still relaxing on her seat. "We're facing primitives here, having just left their home planet just recently, most likely. Besides some above-average anti-ship weaponry and some decent ship plating, they don't stand a ghost of a chance."

The smile on the officer's face evaporated just as he went back to work.

In true turian military fashion, Admiral Lina's fleet formed up and entered the relay. Lina sat properly on her seat once her fleet arrived. She scrutinized the scans made by her chief sensor.

"Hmm… there aren't even any defenders at all." She observed, slightly unnerved now. From the silence of her crew, it appears that they were having the same disturbed feeling that their admiral has.

Lina did a new scan, which turned out negative again. She did a new one, which failed once more. Giving up, the admiral leaned on the console and stared at it in frustration. "Where could they possibly be-"

She was cut off when something slammed into her ship, shaking it slightly. "What the- damage report!" She shouted over to her executive officer, who was busy trying to stand up, using a bulkhead behind him to prop himself up. Picking up his datapad from the floor, the officer relayed his report to the admiral.

"Multiple hull breaches down at the lower deck, ma'am!" He reported, highlighting the red areas of the _Indefatigable_ marked on his datapad for Lina to see. "The crew's reporting that some alien drones have penetrated the hull and are engaging the security deta- huaargh!"

Lina looked at her subordinate with wide eyes as a gnarly-looking robotic tendril went through the bulkhead he was standing behind, impaling him. The officer tried to struggle away from the _thing_ on his stomach, but the tendril spun violently like an industrial drill, killing him as his internal organs were mashed together like pieces of fruit in a blender. Dark blue blood is splattered across the bridge, staining Lina's uniform. The tendril's furthermost end then folded open and revealed a cannon-like weapon from a hidden compartment. With a snap, a hum and a hiss, the cannon discharged amber yellow projectiles in machinelike, deadly-precise motions, effortlessly reducing some of the command crew into smoking corpses, their kinetic barriers strangely ineffective in halting the projectiles.

Instantly, Lina and her remaining staff pulled out whatever weapon they have in hand and emptied their clips on the tendril, utterly reducing it, and the executive officer's body, into pieces. The bulkhead gave away after one soldier threw a grenade, revealing the owner of the tendril.

It was a mechanical, floating drone. It was shaped like an insectoid, robotic mobile weapons platform in a second, but it suddenly transformed into a smooth-looking disc before attempting a retreat. The turian command staff wouldn't let it, though. They continued pouring their combined fire into the drone, finally destroying it after seven seconds of sustained fire.

Lina straightened and dusted off her uniform, absentmindedly throwing her overheated pistol away. "Don't just stand there," She said as she took her station once more. Inwardly, she was extremely unnerved now, but not to the extent that her confidence in the Heirarchy's success faltered. "That's probably the closest they'll get to us, anyway."

**…**

**_FNWS Unpleasant Surprise - 2400km to Shanxi-Theta Relay_**

**_July 04th, 2157_**

**_Admiral Abd-Al-Aziz Hackbar – leader of Shanxi's spaceborne defenders – 183rd Markland Warhawks_**

Admiral Hackbar watched grimly as the alien ships emerged out of the relay. He had already positioned his dreadnought and his 17 allied ships in the most favorable defending position, and he'd already set the 200 Lotus attack drones just within spitting distance of the relay, with programmed orders to attack anything without the Federation emblem marked on their hulls. He waited for several minutes, and when the alien ships have finally stopped emerging from the relay, he counted a total of 450 ships of varying sizes, with two of them having roughly 1/3 the size of the _Annihilator_. Like most of the Federation's ships, the alien ship designs are aesthetically blank; they were made to look as utilitarian and practical as possible.

"Sir, I think this might be the best time to attack." Hackbar's XO, Captain Sanderson, trudged up to her superior officer. "Should I let the drones attack, admiral?"

Hackbar never averted his gaze on the alien fleet. The admiral's ancestors fought in the Great Ethereal War, and it was now upon his shoulders to carry his family's name into the thick of it once more.

"Agreed, captain. Once you do, I want every ship we have to fire two fusion lance salvos and four blaster launcher blasts. After that, I want us out of this system. We won't last long if we stood here longer than five minutes."

"But," Sanderson hesitated, "But what about the colony? We're just going to leave those people down there to die?"

That question forced Hackbar's gaze to turn to Sanderson. "No," He firmly answered. "We are _not_ going to run like cowards. We're outnumbered and outgunned. Once the element of surprise is lost, they're going to make short work of us." He explained; leaning close to the captain so their faces are only inches apart. "We'll regroup with the main Federation relief force, and then, we'll kick the aliens out of this system. Or more properly, we'll leave their wrecked husks here, for the local asteroid belt to gather. Do you understand me, _captain_?"

Sanderson held her ground under her superior officer's scrutiny, to her credit. "Understood, admiral."

Hackbar snorted as he returned to a neutral stance. "Then get to it."

**…**

**_HWS Indefatigable Cargo Hold, Shanxi-Theta Relay_**

**_July 04th, 2157_**

**_Second Lieutenant Saren Arterius - Potential Spectre candidate_**

"HELP ME! BY THE SPIRITS, **_HELP ME_**!" An unfortunate soldier cried out as an alien drone lifted him up using a pair of robotic claws. The soldier held one talon on the trigger of his rifle, causing bullets to fly everywhere.

Saren, like the rest of the turian soldiers present, did his best as he tried to shoot the drone down, but it moved too fast, too fluid, too unpredictable and abrupt. To silence its victim, and to cut his compatriots some slack, the drone straightened its tail before impaling the soldier.

The soldier screamed even louder as the alien drone stabbed its tendril-like tail again and again before its prey finally went limp after several seconds of repeated stabbing. But to go one step further, the drone proceeded to tear its dead victim's corpse apart quite literally, with limbs, pieces of torn armor and viscera flying all over. Saren grimaced as he kept his talon on the trigger. Several times did his rifle overheat; whatever made these drones surely made them to be durable and fast.

The drone buckled under sustained small-arms fire, but it was not done yet. It revealed its full compliment of nasty-looking armaments hidden from compartments in its insect-like robotic body before turning its sights on the nearest soldier. With a hum, the drone unleashed its payload of bright yellow projectiles on the poor turian, reducing its target into smouldering pieces of meat and blue fluids on the floor. The drone kept repeating its actions until its total kill count amounted to a dozen and a half turians.

Just when Saren's rifle was about to overheat again, Desolas showed up beside him, with a missile launcher in hand. He fired at the drone; finally managing to do significant damage after the missile scored a direct hit on the machine, exposing its interiors. The rest of the turian soldiers finished it off by focusing on the gaping hole on its chassis, bringing it down. The drone twitched and spasmed before exploding, causing two soldiers in close proximity to the drone to be thrown away from the blast.

Saren collapsed on a crate, just as a soldier called all clear, her echoing voice being the only thing that shattered the sickening silence in the cargo hold. Saren leaned on his crate as he checked over the plasma burn he had sustained. It was only a glancing shot, but it was enough to put the turian soldier out of the game. For some strange, sinister reason, Saren's kinetic barriers did nothing to help him.

"That would be the last, brother." Desolas nonchalantly stated as he looked over his younger brother. The turian general looked over Saren's injuries before ejecting a spent missile casing from his weapon. "That doesn't look too bad, you know. My soldiers reported that they killed no less than fourteen of these things within this dreadnought alone, but the most of the fleet did not fare as well like ours."

"What do you mean, Desolas?" Saren asked as he examined the drone's ruined husk.

"According to our good admiral, the _Discipline, Caetrax, Exalted of Palaven_ and the _Impera_ had all been reduced to skeleton ships by these things," Desolas explained, somewhat uncaringly. "With many more being in the process of joining these doomed ships."

The younger Arterius sighed gravely. "If these aliens deployed unmanned drones this strong as their expendable, throwaway units, do we even want to see what they're really capable of, brother?"

The older Arterius looked down on his brother, like he was reprimanding a child for a wrongdoing. "Don't be so resigned, Saren. The Turian Military has never been defeated since the Rebellions, and it sure as hell _not_ going to be kicked out of this system by mere primitives."

Saren shook his head at his brother. "If the bastards who made _that_," He pointed at the drone husk. "Are primitives to you, I shudder to think what an actual military force is."

**…**

**_FNWS Unpleasant Surprise - 400km to Shanxi-Theta Relay_**

**_July 04th, 2157_**

**_Admiral Hackbar_**

"…and that's the trap."

Hackbar observed as the alien ships were thrown into disarray. Cruisers drifted from formation after a wing of Lotuses entered them, their crew undoubtedly killed to the last. Other ships also drifted slightly, but not the effect that signifies that the Lotuses were successful, before going back in formation, indicating that the alien crew fought the drone assault off. Slowly, his Lotus units were blinking out, as the minutes pass. They were being wiped out.

"Now's our chance. All ships, fire your main guns." He ordered over fleetcom.

The _Unpleasant Surprise _and the 17 Federation ships shook as their fusion lances charged up. Precisely a second later, they unleashed their payload in near-perfect synchronization. The lances of pale orange beams darted across space, hitting their mark: the smaller dreadnought. What followed next caused the normally stoic admiral to arch an eyebrow in mild surprise.

The dreadnought took a direct hit to its command bridge, outright consuming it in an enormous orange fireball. The bow took direct hits as well, the fusion lance beams going almost unopposed as they worked their way into the alien dreadnought. With the impacts it sustained, the dreadnought broke in three pieces before the middle part exploded a bluish-white hue; undoubtedly from its fusion core overloading from the damage it took.

**…**

**_HWS Indefatigable_**

**_Admiral Aureliana_**

"Spirits…" Lina breathed out, her flanging voice being the only sound that was made amongst the silence that is the _Indefatigable_'s command bridge.

The command staff watched in utter terror as the _Wrath of Slyrak_ broke into pieces before going out in a bright blue detonation. Lina's mind raced for an answer as to why the alien projectiles went and ignored the _Slyrak_'s shields outright, but the more she thought about it, the more she thought that the Hierarchy made the wrong decision.

"Fucking energy weapons…" A crewman broke the silence with a raspy, dry voice - a curious mix of fear, anger and awe lacing his tone. "These aliens have _energy weapons _as their main armaments! The beams passed right through the _Slyrak_'s kinetic barriers!"

That was the prompt Lina needed. Breaking her head out of the clouds, the admiral's resolve was renewed as she stood up and addressed her crew. "Everyone, this operation has gone a lot harder for us. We've been slacking off, thinking that this is all going to be easy." Lina forced some iron in her voice, to keep the crew on high spirits. "Not anymore. Time to man up, boys. By the end of this day, I want the Legion banner planted on that Spirits-damned colony!"

"Ma'am," The senior sensor officer meekly cut in, "I'd hate to interrupt, but we've got new contacts from the east, eighteen ships – fifteen cruisers, two frigates and a small dreadnought, closing in from 400 Ks and counting! What do we do?"

**…**

**_FNWS Unpleasant Surprise - 150km to Shanxi-Theta Relay_**

**_Admiral Hackbar_**

The crew of all the Federation ships burst simultaneously into a vigorous cheer, but the gunner crews in charge of the primary and secondary armaments remained focused on their jobs. The fusion lances were the smaller-scale models, so recharge times are a measly fifteen seconds instead of the usual sixty-five. However, blaster launcher cannons and the more conventional plasma cannons are fully operational.

"Make ready, men! On my mark, I want every ship to fire your secondaries."

Hackbar's voice through the PA sent the gunnery crews scrambling as they made sure to make their shots do as much damage to the old enemy as possible. Blaster launcher missiles were calibrated to the last degree, and plasma cannons were filled to capacity with supercharged projectiles.

"Let fly, all guns!"

For the next ten seconds, the only sound that could be registered on everyone's ears were the energy weapon discharges from the lower decks of their ships. Plasma cannon fire and blaster launcher volleys emerged from the seventeen Federation ships, streaking through the void, towards the alien.

Instantly, the alien ships in front of the fleet formation were reduced to flaming wrecks like wood before a sawmill. The energy weapons salvo was like a force of nature – a tidal wave brushing aside the small, insignificant forces unfortunate enough to be in its path of destruction. Those who were not immediately hit performed defensive maneuvers, and to Admiral Hackbar's surprise, they performed admirably, almost to the point that they seemed better than Federation crews themselves. Like well-disciplined, highly trained soldiers in a parade march, the alien ships parted, with multiple plasma cannon salvos going wide. However, the blaster launcher missiles were made to seek out their marks, and only the most talented pilots ever managed to dodge the projectiles. However, the larger dreadnought weathered all the punishment it was subjected to, strangely.

"All ships, fire your fusion lances on my mark!"

The gunnery crew prepared to fire once more. Fusion lances were given a massive boost to its energy input, to hammer the last nails on the coffin of the last alien dreadnought. Just when the recharge bar hit 98%, something forced that to come to a halt.

"Belay that order! Take evasive maneuvers!"

**…**

**_HWS Indefatigable_**

**_Admiral Lina_**

"Return fire, all guns!"

The remaining four-hundred and three turian ships of the Draius Legion opened fire with all they've got. Mass accelerator cannons of varying sizes; disruptor torpedoes and everything else were fired on the seventeen alien aggressors.

Admiral Lina's mandibles flared in triumph as she watched the two enemy frigates immediately got blasted apart, with the majority of the cruisers sustaining moderate to heavy damage. The enemy dreadnought sustained damage of its own, but not to a significant degree. Through the admiral's observation, she learned that the enemy ships didn't made use of kinetic barriers, preferring to use layers of thick armored plating instead.

"That's it, men! Make them pay!"

The turian fleet is all too eager to comply with its admiral. The turian ships never let up, perforating the alien ships. Lina noted that mass accelerator cannons (except from her own dreadnought) from her vessels were doing less damage than what was acceptable. The rounds seem to just bounce off, but with massive numerical superiority on her side, dizzying amounts of firepower were enough to cause significant damage to the enemy ships.

Soon, all that's left of the alien flotilla were four cruisers and the dreadnought, which were fortunate to be ahead of effective weapons range. Lina growled at the situation, which turned from a potential total victory, to a tactical victory. She leaned on her console, broadcasting her ire to her fleet.

"By the Titans Themselves," She spat out, her venomous contempt quite apparent. "I want Fleet Group Denarius to break formation; pursue and annihilate those ships! Fleet Groups Aureus and Quinarius, stay with our group; we're bombarding that colony harder than we did so with the krogan!"

**…**

**_FNWS Unpleasant Surprise_**

**_Admiral Hackbar_**

The admiral's ship buckled as its pursuers continued hounding it. Hackbar had already ensured that his surviving ships made an FTL jump out of the system to safety, but his own dreadnought suffered too much damage to the thrusters and the engines to function properly.

"Admiral!" Sanderson shouted over to Hackbar, as she tried extinguishing a rather large conflagration from an exploded console. "If things go on like this, we'll be dead in three minutes! What do we do?"

Hackbar weighed over his options. If he continued to fight, he'd be sentencing himself and his crew to a pointless death. If he continued fleeing, he'd be doing the same, but with delayed consequences. On the other hand...

"Captain, we're making a crash-landing on Shanxi. Tell the navigator to set a course for the colony, preferably an empty, open plain. Have the men prepared."

"Aye, admir- What?" Sanderson disbelievingly asked between breaths as she resorted to kicking the flame. "We're crash-landing on a _planet_?!"

"That's what I said, captain! We don't have a choice on that matter!" Hackbar snapped rather violently. "It's either that, or we'd be torn apart in space, where there's no chance we'll ever survive!"

Sanderson managed to extinguish the flame by smothering it with a slab of broken machinery. "Alright, admiral! I'll get the men ready!"

Hackbar watched as his executive officer ran off to the PA console. He reminded himself that losing one's temper during a stressful situation could only worsen the situation further. With that particular thought in mind, the admiral seated himself, strapped his seatbelt as rigid as he could and held on for the inevitable. With everything that he needed to do having been done, Hackbar could only sit and watch as his ship made its descent; his hands intertwined, eyes closed and mind deep in prayer. _Today, I'll make my ancestors proud._

**...**

**_HWS Indefatigable - in orbit of the Shanxi colony_**

**_July 04th, 2157_**

**_Admiral Lina_**

"Looks like the bastards have finally ran out of luck and options." Lina noted as she observed the enemy dreadnought taking a plunge into Shanxi's atmosphere. Strangely, it never broke into two pieces as it descended as a fire-coated ball, remaining relatively intact before inevitably crashing into the planet's surface, creating a kilometer-long trench where it landed.

"Ma'am, all ground forces are ready for duty," Lina's recently field promoted executive officer reported. "General Desolas and Lieutenant Victus will be leading the main assault force in the capital city, General Severus and his armored companies will be tasked with taking over the military facility northwest of the capital city, and Air Chief Marshal Caracalla will be in command of the air squadrons, providing support wherever they could. Is that correct, admiral?"

Lina looked over the datapad displaying her chosen leaders for the planetbound assault. She was mostly satisfied, but there is one more thing that she needed to do before she could send her forces to the colony down below.

"It's fine, captain. But tell the gunnery crews to commence an orbital bombardment first, to soften these bastards up." Lina's voice took a more venomous tinge. But more importantly, I want these aliens' resolves _crushed_; their spirits broken. Once the ground force reaches the planet's surface, I want them on their knees, begging for a peaceful _turian_ takeover. I wouldn't want it any other way."

Lina's executive officer looked unnerved at his admiral's newfound hatred towards these aliens, but he didn't object. "Right away, ma'am."

Before he could turn away, Lina halted the officer. "Wait, when are our reinforcements coming, and how many are they?"

"The Jarrakus Mondranor, Mrrakos Pelagius and the Somerion Plogrinax Legions have sent some of their frigates, cruisers and a single dreadnought to aid us. They'll be here in four hours, and I think they amounted to about two hundred and twenty ships, not including the fighters." The officer explained. "I think it might be overkill with that many ships on our side."

"Believe me," Lina sighed as she relaxed on her seat once more, having already done everything that she needed to do. "Nothing's ever overkill in this day and age."

**_..._**

**_Shanxi Garrison - an hour after Admiral Hackbar's flotilla retreated_**

**_SCF Command Bunker, Underground, July 04th, 2157_**

**_General Malcolm H. Williams - commander of the Shanxi colonial forces_**

General Williams watched in silence as several fireballs fell from the sky from the vidscreen in his office, which was streaming live footage from the surface. The general grunted; the fireballs were undoubtedly wreckage from the battle going on up in space. He idly wondered if they were alien wreckage, or they're what's left of Admiral Hackbar's makeshift flotilla of hastily retrofitted military vessels. Shanxi's defenders were more than enough to take care of the usual colony threats, but a full-fledged alien invasion is truly out of everyone's league; except for the occasional skirmish with pirates, not a single soul in Shanxi had ever any experience in actual combat.

Well, except maybe for the new arrivals.

For some strange reason, the two hundred and sixty three crewmembers of the two devilship cruisers that had just survived first contact with these aliens were literally bulging with high-end, ultramodern armor and weaponry. They even possessed some pieces of technology that weren't readily available in most of the Federation's militaries.

Two days ago, the general couldn't help but feel suspicious about these strangers the moment they arrived. Sure, they might've just survived an alien attack - the first in a century even, but why do they have access to MEC troopers and Aug troopers? He even recognized two dozen of the crew as Gifted individuals. Williams was most suspicious about this particular detail, as normally, people in possession of the Gift were hard to find, and much harder to bring together in one place, unless they're working for a military force.

Williams came to the conclusion that they worked for a paramilitary organization that specializes in equipping their operatives with the best equipment. He inwardly snarled with contempt.

_EXALT. _He thought.

Before the general could stand up from his desk and voice his concerns to his men further down the bunker, a loud shrieking sound interrupted him; it was loud enough to be heard several hundred meters underground. This caused the general to widen his eyes as he realized what was about to happen. Bracing himself to his desk, Williams prepared himself for an orbital bombardment. Sure enough, the bunker he was in was forcefully subjected to an earthquake, which was followed by another and another.

It appears that the aliens have broken through the spaceborne defense. Admiral Hackbar and his flotilla could be dead for all Williams knew, but he was sure that him and his men gave their best, only that their best wasn't enough. But still, the general is quite relieved to know that the preparations he made had paid off. A day earlier, just after news of a potential alien invasion reached his ears, General Williams had all of the colony's civilian population be evacuated to another continent, where the aliens would think twice before bombarding due to its barrenness. All military personnel under Williams' command were also evacuated from the cities, into an underground complex just a few kilometers away from the capital city, which is being reduced to rubble as the time flies by.

Now, the vidscreen on his office displayed the extent of the devastation that's being wrought in Shanxi. Entire city blocks were flattened, groups of buildings were toppled over, millions of credits worth of property were lost, but no human casualties as of yet. The bombardment would likely last for an hour at the least, but the bunker should hold. With nothing else important to do, the general began making plans for defending the ruins of the capital city against the alien advance, which would happen eventually. Having done all that he could for now, Williams could only sit and plan on his desk as he watched the world above burn from his vidscreen.

**...**

**_New Larkintown - Shanxi's capital city_**

**_July 04th, 2157_**

**_Corporal Vespasian Thrax - Talon squad member_**

The capital city of Shanxi looked like it's been nuked a multitude of times, was used as a staging ground for a particularly violent skirmish, and used as a munitions dump before being set alight, from Corporal Thrax's observation as him and several hundred of his fellow soldiers advanced through the ruins, looking for any alien resistance. Thrax's battlegroup was labeled as the Kayagkar battlegroup, under Lieutenant Adrien Victus' command. This particular battlegroup is tasked with protecting General Desolas' battlegroup's right flank as they moved through the city's center. The other battlegroup, which was called Enkiravost, was in charge of moving through the leftmost ruins of the city. All in all, the turians in the capital city numbered a total of seven thousand soldiers and three hundred tanks, and that's not counting General Severus and Marshal Caracalla's men, which were posted somewhere else in the colony.

Suddenly, Thrax's sergeant crouched and held up a balled hand, causing everyone behind him to stop advancing and head down into the rubble, into cover. The sergeant pointed at a particular piece of rubble, before pointing to his own eyes. Everyone turned to look at what he pointed at, which appeared to be just what it is: a piece of rubble lying next to a toppled building.

"I don't see anything..." One of the soldiers spoke up.

"Me neither. Maybe the sergeant's seeing things." Another suggested. "We should keep moving. This is getting us nowh-"

"I said _halt_!" The sergeant's voice raised an octave higher before he returned to his usual voice. "I saw something moving over there, and I'm not just "seeing things", private." He righted his stance and pantomimed shooting the area he pointed at.

"_Are you sure, sergeant?_" Thrax mouthed out to his commanding officer, who only nodded before holding up all three of his talons. He was counting down.

When the last digit fell, Thrax and his fellow soldiers immediately emptied a volley of bullets into the rubble, and sure enough, they were rewarded with the sound of their bullets impacting against something metallic. When they finished firing, an object resembling a black-plated, robotic tentacled machine plopped to the ground with a metallic crash.

The sergeant looked over his squad, a wry look on his face. "Any volunteers to see what that thing is?"

Two soldiers raised their hands as they waited for their rifles to cool down. The sergeant nodded and shifted positions to better cover the advancing soldiers. Thrax also shifted position, putting himself behind one of the bigger members of his squad.

The two soldiers cautiously advanced towards their fallen target, which looked like an aquatic animal. Once they were close enough, they examined it for several seconds.

"It's another drone, sir." One of the soldiers called to his sergeant. "Probably a scout, or an infiltrator unit."

The second soldier was curious about the drone, however. He prodded the fallen machine with the barrel of his rifle. He shouldn't have.

The machine emitted an electrostatic shock, stunning the turian. Before anyone could do anything, the machine had already floated up to the stunned soldier's head and enveloped his neck in a choking hold, administering agonizing amounts of electricity all the while. The soldier can't even bring himself to scream as the drone went and decapitated his head clean off, eliciting a shower of turian blood from the stump.

Thrax and the rest of the turians immediately made short work of the drone, making sure that it stays dead permanently by emptying copious amounts of mass accelerated rounds into the machine.

As quick as they killed the drone, a series of events quickly transpired.

A _swoosh_ was heard, echoing in the air. Exactly a second later, the soldier Thrax was taking cover behind keeled over. "Sharpshooter!" He cried out, and the rest of his fellows headed down on the ground.

Thrax looked over his fallen comrade. He found that a gaping, smouldering hole was made on his chest. His internal organs are clearly visible, having been scorched to a crisp. Thrax grimaced at the corpse as he ripped the dog-tags from his neck.

Suddenly, an object landed a few meters from Thrax. It was a canister-shaped device, with glowing red parts and a small piece of paper attached to it. Quickly taking action, Thrax put himself behind his dead colleague's corpse.

The device exploded, unleashing serrated shards of chitinous projectiles in every direction. Soldiers closest to the explosion were literally turned into pincushions as the shards impaled every inch of their bodies. Others were more fortunate, having merely been maimed instead of killed outright, and limbs were ripped from their sockets, pinned to surfaces by the shards. Thrax gasped as the body he was hiding behind was impaled by shards, with some hovering only a few inches from his face.

"Contacts! Enemy infantry!" A soldier shouted. All hell broke loose as energy weapons fire killed off some of the turians. Thrax's battlegroup immediately returned fire at the aliens, which looked like krogan from a distance due to the massive size of the armor they wore. Thrax himself stood up and contributed his fire, but at the same time, he couldn't help but feel fear once he saw how effective the aliens' weapons are against turian kinetic barriers and armor.

In a cruel mockery of turian discipline, the alien soldiers made tactical shifts, trying their damndest to avoid turian fire. Thrax noted that it wasn't very hard to land shots on these aliens as they lumbered about because they had the same size signature as krogan. However, trying to hit them is one thing, trying to take them down is another. Again and again, Thrax could see that his weapon might as well be firing duds, for all the damage it did. Strange, he thought that these aliens wore weak shields, but he noticed that they _aren't_ wearing shields. For all the advanced technologies they possess, at least these aliens have their failings.

"Cut that one off!" The sergeant ordered, pointing towards an alien that was drifting farther and farther away from his comrades. Thrax poured rifle fire as he watched his fellows advance from the rubble, with some being blasted apart as they ran after being caught out in the open at the wrong time. Soon, the turians formed a pincer-like formation, cutting the isolated alien off from his allies. Thrax covered his teammates as they moved in for the kill, literally perforating the alien with liberal amounts of assault rifle fire. The alien fell in short order, but there were still more.

"Sergeant Lysandros, report!" Thrax heard Victus' voice over groupcomm.

"We've encountered alien ground forces, sir!" A voice answered. "You want us to disengage?"

There was a pause before Victus answered, "Negative, hold your ground. I'm sending some of the tanks to you. Take care of them!"

"Yes, sir!" The same voice replied before logging off.

After taking another batch of aliens down, Thrax's sergeant found that his position isn't favorable anymore. "Alright, withdraw! Regroup with the team!"

Thrax pulled out his sniper rifle to cover his repositioning teammates. He watched as several dozen of his teammates pulled back. Once a few had managed to retreat back to their original position, the rest found themselves cut off from their team after a dozen aliens arrived from the sky, jump packs fastened to their armor, blocking their path.

Those who were closest to the aliens when they landed were cut down like dogs before they could react. After firing a single burst from their rifles, the aliens suddenly holstered their weapons and pulled out syringes, jamming them on a barely visible porthole on the neck section of their armor. With a collective roar, the aliens activated some mechanism in their armor, which revealed a nasty set of metal claws on each of their gauntlets. What followed next made the even the bravest turian to flinch at the scene unfolding before them.

The aliens, using their jump packs to give them boosts, each pounced on a turian soldier of their choosing before literally tearing their victims asunder, like a wolf pack on their chosen prey, the aliens offered no mercy as they ribboned whatever poor turian they came across. It came to the point where the aliens did not appear like they were fighting for their survival; they were letting out blood-curling laughs as they did their bloody work. _They must see this as some sort of sport!_ Thrax contemplated.

One of the aliens, apparently making Thrax his target, proceeded to make a beeline for him. Thrax emptied shots of his sniper rifle on the alien, but he kept coming. With a roar, the alien activated his jump pack, just like how he did with several dozen other turians before him. But before he could reach his target, he was blown to bloody pieces when a nearby turian heavy tank managed to score a direct hit on him mid-air.

The aliens remained oblivious as they continued their work. They didn't notice until it was too late, that several heavy tanks are positioned perfectly to finish them off.

"Fire!" A solitary voice rang over the comm.

Thrax watched in satisfaction as the alien berserkers were bombarded to death. He didn't like the fact that some of his comrades were blasted apart by friendly fire, but it's a small price to pay to get these aliens off the battlegroup's back. He made a move to return to his squad, but when he turned around,

"Oh, hello there, lil' fella!"

It was one of the aliens, holding some sort of cubical device which was mounted on a grip. It was pointed right at Thrax's face.

Before the turian could even react, an incapacitating amount of electricity was already coursing through his body. He tried to scream, but the alien landed a quick ironclad fist to his neck, before following it up with another strike to his jaw, and that was before the alien lifted him from the ground and slammed him down into the rubble. Thrax heard his bones making disturbing noises as he impacted the blackened ground with a muffled yelp. His consciousness is slowly fading.

"Looks like you're coming home with us..."

**...**

**_New Larkintown - Uptown Commons - XCOM Shanxi Branch HQ_**

**_July 04th, 2157_**

**_Colonel/Senior Field Agent Jonathan Shepard - commander of the XCOM forces in Shanxi, the "Gray Knight"_**

"Colonel, our forces have engaged the aliens. We made some progress, but we were forced to fall back when the aliens started bringing in the heavy tanks. What are your orders?"

Shepard put a gauntleted hand to his ear. Him and his unit of two-hundred odd men and women were the only survivors of the first contact fleet. After most of his comrades in S:E17 were killed off, including Captain Granger, it was Shepard who took command. It was good of Faust's predecessor to establish a hideout for XCOM forces in Shanxi, Shepard thought. General Williams is suspicious of the colonel and his men, and refused them sanctuary in that underground complex of his when Shepard asked. Naturally, XCOM Shanxi was the first thing that crossed Shepard's mind next.

"Regroup with the main force as quickly as you can." The colonel ordered. "How many casualties did you sustain, soldier?"

"About... fourteen of our own were killed, sir. Most of them were from the berserker squad you posted. Poor bastards didn't notice that they're about to be surrounded by freakin' _tanks_ before it's too late."

"Any wounded?" Shepard asked once more.

The agent took a few seconds to respond. "Nothing major, the aliens are using peashooters and omni-tool tech attacks as their main armaments. Nothing short of sustained fire and tanks could kill us, sir." The agent spoke with pride, as if believing himself superior to the aliens. "Oh, and I've brought some company. Bram's got one of the aliens arced."

For the first time in a week, Shepard allowed himself a smile. "Nice work, we could use some company down here. It's getting quite lonely with just humans to talk to."

"You should tell your girlfriend she's got something new to play with, then." The agent continued, and then that smile on Shepard's face evaporated. "What? You seriously didn't think we couldn't catch-"

"Alright. Looks like it's time to initiate the main plan." Shepard cut the comm off and faced his men, which amounted to at least a hundred regular humans in either Colossus armor or Wraith armor, thirty MEC troopers outfitted in the newer MEC-LXXIII "Legionnaire" model, thirty Aug troopers possessing a wide range of gene augs and twenty Psi-ops troopers, who were donning suits of Ilyushinite-plated Psi armor.

A fellow colonel, who also happened to be Shepard's second-in-command and... _very_ close "confidante", Colonel Karlotte Thierfelder - a descendant of the "famous" Dietrich Thierfelder, stood amongst his men, smiling at him warmly.

Shepard gave his own restrained smile to Karlotte before returning to his duties, powering up his omni-tool and displaying the current situation to his soldiers.

"Men, contact has been made with the aliens downtown. As usual, they're not making any moves to negotiate, or explain why they're doing this to us. They're merely single-mindedly focused on dishing out violence, like aliens always do. Field Agent Lewis did a good job planting a locator beacon on one of the enemy tanks. I'm streaming footage of the aliens now."

Shepard's omni-tool displayed the alien invaders with utmost detail. The colonel noted that these aliens look reptilian, with a curious mix of avian features. They are currently piling up their dead, which looked like it amounted to at least a hundred. The other aliens took turns examining the fallen XCOM agents' corpses. Shepard's hands balled into fists as he watched the aliens claw off pieces of his comrades' armor, before taking prolonged stares at the dead human underneath it. Some of the aliens even tried field testing the agents' plasma weaponry. This part did little to ease Shepard's anger as the weapons exploded in their hands.

"They're just playing with their bodies, colonel!" A trooper spoke up. "We can't let them do that to us, we do that to _them_!"

Shepard gestured for the trooper to stand down. "Easy, soldier. Each of us are going to get plenty of aliens to kill. But first, let's discuss tactics." He switched the feed from the aliens, to a field agent - Agent Henry Lewis.

"Soldier, what can you tell us about the aliens' weapons and armor?"

Lewis looks like he was sprinting away from something, but his voice remained calm as he ran. "Aw, nothing special. They're like souped-up versions of conventional ballistic weaponry, but you still should be careful around those things, I saw a couple of chaps go down after being pumped full of lead. Their armor though..." The agent chuckled. "With a Kessler rifle in your hands, it's like they're puttin' on a piece of wet tissue paper to fuck a chainsaw. You should have no problems killin' any of them in one pull of the trigger."

Several bullets whizzed past the agent's head. "Woah, that bloody was close! Oh, and you should be careful around their tanks, too. They look very lightly armored, but their turrets are strong. They're using hover tanks, so you should expect them to be faster than your average tanks. Well, that's all I've got. If you'll excuse me sir, I've gotta keep running for my life."

"Thank you, Lewis." Shepard cut the feed, powering his omni-tool down after. "As you've heard, we've got a _massive_ technological advantage against these aliens, which is surprising, because _they're_ the ones supposed to be better in every way when concerning technology."

"There's no use in being cautious, as it'll only give the enemy time to regroup and finish us off." Shepard stated. "They've only got heavy tanks for armored support. We've got MEC troopers and Psi-ops troopers. I say we hit them with all we've got before they have a chance to strike back. We'll do this like Lord Cardigan's Light Brigade, but this time, the cavalry's got plasma rifles and powered armor, and the enemy has flintlocks and swords."

"And the guy leadin' the cavalry _isn't_ an incompetent arse!" A voice shouted over from the back, with more than a few snickers and laughs being made. After they had their fun, the troopers all nodded in acknowledgment at Shepard's plan, seemingly satisfied.

"Any more questions before we go?" The colonel asked, wishing he won't regret his words. Sometimes, even XCOM personnel acted like teenagers.

A MEC trooper raised a giant hand. Shepard pointed to him. "Uh, there's just two hundred of us, sir. Without heavy armor support, they'll just wear us down with their numbers and tanks. There's only so much we could bear with our armor."

The colonel smirked. "Who said we _don't_ have heavy armor support?"

The lights to the rightmost corner of the mostly inactive base turned on, after Shepard triggered some knobs on a nearby switch-box. It was revealed to be a vehicle hangar.

A vehicle hangar containing no less than a dozen Crusader-pattern sectopods and some Lebedev-class Voidlances.

The troopers nodded apprehensively. "Not bad," The MEC trooper said, giant arms crossed on his armored chest.

**...**

_**New Larkintown - XCOM Shanxi Branch HQ - Director's Office**_

**_Colonel/Senior Field Agent Karlotte Thierfelder - Alpha Class Psi Operative_**

_"_Jon, hello."

Shepard looked up from his desk warily. His armored shoulders slumped and his stance slackened when he saw his second-in-command. "Karlotte, how are you?"

"I'm fine, Jon." She replied, smiling. "You called for me?"

"As a matter of fact, I did." The colonel gestured to a seat in front of his desk. "I've an assignment for you, but before that, let's have a talk."

Shepard was not fazed at all when Karlotte laughed as a response. "Oh, come on, Jon. You can cut the "professional military man" crap and talk properly now. No one's gonna see you like this, you know."

Shepard groaned, albeit light-heartedly. "Right, just sit down. Please?"

The psionic colonel sat down as instructed, her gloved hands across her lap. "Well, what've you got for me, then?"

"Oh, you know," Shepard hesitated, prolonging his words as he thought of the right things to say. "Did it come out positive? Has anybody known yet?"

A devious smile formed on Karlotte's face. "I'm afraid it did, Jonathan."

Shepard's eyes widened in shock as he locked Karlotte into a gaze. "Are you su-"

"Of course I'm sure," Karlotte steadfastly replied, never losing her cheer. "And don't worry. Nobody knows but me and the doctor." She extended a gloved hand towards Shepard's gauntlet on his desk, resting it on top of his. "I guess that includes you now."

The colonel sighed in relief. "Ah good, good." He grabbed hold of Karlotte's hand in a gentle grip. "I guess that's that, then. We're a family now."

"Yes." Karlotte replied, relishing the moments they were out of XCOM-related duties. "It's a boy, and it's also positive for the Gift. We're going to have a _psionic_ child, Jon."

For the first time in years, Shepard felt the misery that dogged him for all of his life fading away into dust. His own father never did raise him like a decent father did. In fact, for most of his life, he dreaded the word. But in this moment, he has been provided a chance to become a better man than his father ever was.

But suddenly, Shepard's features contorted into that of dread and worry. "Are you sure you wanted to participate? I don't think you should be doing anything that involves live fire at your... condition."

"You know me, Jon." Karlotte replied somewhat irritatedly. "Wherever you go, I'd rather be there than anywhere else. Don't think you can convince me otherwise; that little policy of mine isn't subject for change any time soon."

Shepard resignedly sighed, defeated. Karlotte always had a way of getting under his skin and making him do what she wanted.

In reponse, Karlotte grinned in triumph at Shepard's expense. "Now, if I recall correctly, you've got something for me to do."

Shepard immediately felt better at the change of subjects. Adopting his cold, military façade once more, Shepard spoke, "Yes, about that. I'm sure you've heard about the captive alien Zeta squad arced. I want you to learn all you could from our friend; show him human hospitality."

Karlotte stood up from her seat, "Say no more, colonel." She mock saluted and started walking away from Shepard's desk, stopping just a few steps from the door.

"Oh, and Jon? Does "Karlotte Theirfelder-Shepard" sound good to the ears?"

The colonel shook his head jestingly. "I've never liked how my family name sounded, it makes people think I'm something I'm not. I guess you'll have to live with it now."

Karlotte laughed. "All the better, Jon. I'll be back when I've had my... "talk", with our new friend." She walked off the director's office.

Shepard slumped on his seat and watched his future partner walk away. "Ah, that woman."

**...**

_**New Larkintown - City Outskirts**_

_**July 04th 2157**_

_**General Williams**_

With a grim expression on his face, Williams viewed New Larkintown's ruins from his Crusader's cockpit. He rallied all available military forces at his disposal in a bid to counter the alien force reported to be lurking around in the city center. As his men marched with him, Williams' grip on the controls tightened as he went further and further into the city, which was once a picturesque, calm community, where people once lived and worked at. Truly, the aliens have much to answer for.

"Sir Williams? Someone's trying to hail us over the comms." First Lieutenant Maxson reported. "It's heavily encrypted; we can't lock on to it, or track its location. We could only either accept it, or ignore it."

Williams growled. He could ill afford interruptions, but the mysterious properties of the hails captured his curiosity. "Patch it through, lieutenant."

"General," A raspy, familiar voice forced Williams to put his sectopod into a halt, forcing his unit to do so as well. "We heard you're going for an offensive into the alien-held city center. We're here to offer you our assistance."

"Piss off, EXALT." Williams spat into his radio. "I'll never work with muton-humping terrorists."

A rumbling laugh was heard, before the voice resumed talking. "EXALT, general? Last I've heard, my organization ground them to dust; they aren't in any capacity to go off-world, in their condition."

"Just who the hell are you then, "not-EXALT"?" Williams asked, anger being partially replaced with full-on curiosity. "Some secret, black-ops, government-funded alien hunters?"

"An accurate description, general." The voice sarcastically drawled, "Have you heard about an organization called XCOM?"

Williams rolled his eyes. "That don't exist. It's some conspiracy made by deranged, post-invasion lunatics in the mid-21st century's internet. You're not telling me you're really XCOM, are you?"

"You have to accept the facts, general."

Immediately after the voice uttered those words, soldiers in powered armor appeared out of the rubble; rising from the ruins, appearing out of the ruined windows or simply decloaking into view. Williams' men hastily formed into attention, training their weapons at the strangers within their ranks, but the strangers themselves only stood their ground, their stances passive and unaggressive. Williams' own sectopod was approached by two strangers. One of them wore a bulky set of dark gray powered armor, and judging from the dull gold trim adorning it, he must be an officer. Like her comrade next to her, the next soldier wore a suit of purplish-black powered armor, but with considerably less bulk, and with the purple trim on her shoulders signifying her status as a psionic operative.

"You already know who we are, general." The first soldier stated, removing his helmet and revealing himself to be the leader of the devilships' crews. With his scarred, weathered features, rough stubble and sunken, jaded gray eyes, Colonel Shepard looked like a man born, bred and raised in the fires of war. His armaments, an ornately decorated sword sheathed in a deadly corona of disruptive energy, and a thick, baroque shield coated in an electrical energy similar to the sword, were held firmly on each gauntleted hand. "On the director's behalf, I ask you to keep quiet about our existence."

The second soldier's helmet folded into her suit. On contrast with Shepard's look, the only sign that Karlotte is just as versed in the art of war as Shepard is a neat scar over her left eye. "The circumstances forced us to reveal ourselves to you," She said, her voice deadly serious. "A lot of people would want our heads for the things our precursors have done. We don't exactly have the time to tell you everything about us, but we'd _really_ appreciate it if you'd let us help you in your alien-killing spree, _and_ you'd forget we even talked to you in the first place after this is over." Her serious tone was gradually replaced with her best unpleasantly cheerful voice.

Williams pushed a knob inside his sectopod, letting the cockpit's doors fold themselves open. Warily, the general pulled a cigarette out of his coat pocket, making sure to do it slowly, as to not have these XCOM agents mistake his moves for an underhanded attack. Perching the object on his mouth and taking a long drag out of it, the general drawled,

"So, what do you have in mind?"

**...**

_**New Larkintown - Downtown - an hour after XCOM forces regrouped with General Williams and his men**_

_**July 04th, 2157**_

_**General Desolas Arterius - commander of Battlegroup Motokariya**_

"General!" A soldier's voice cried from the groupcomm.

Desolas received the soldier through his channel. He couldn't help but notice the sound of gunfire, shouts and explosions echoing from the soldier's side. "I'm reading you, private. I hear gunfire, you've found the aliens?"

"Yes, sir!" The soldier answered after a prolonged pause. "Battlegroup Kayagkar had already engaged the aliens, and they've suffered heavy casualties! You ordered my squad to scout the area ahead, and-" An explosion cut off the soldier.

"Private? Private!" The general growled. He was about to cut comms when another voice entered the channel, through the soldier's line. Desolas listened to the foreign-sounding language that a synthesized, masculine voice uttered. But suddenly, the general found that he can't bring himself to turn away from the voice. It's like something's compelling him to-

**_THROUGH THE VOICES IN YOUR HEAD, WE CALL OUT TO YOU._**

**_HEED US; AN EASY CONQUEST IS NOT WHAT YOU WILL ACHIEVE._**

**_MANY HAVE TRIED BEFORE YOU, ALL HAD FAILED._**

**_LIKE THOSE BEFORE YOU, A GRUESOME DEATH AWAITS YOUR KIND._**

**_TURN BACK. YOU ARE NOT WELCOME HERE._**

Desolas' hand idly dropped from his ear. The general stumbled and dropped to his knees, his eyes on the verge of letting out a river of tears. Never had he experienced such hate, such spite, such malevolence trained directly at him, or anyone for that matter. The legion of voices that occupied his mind crippled him; replaced his courage and bravery with that of fear and panic.

Suddenly, several of his soldiers turned on each other. Desolas could only watch in horror as former comrades, who were talking and laughing just minutes ago, now relentlessly perforated each other with mass accelerated rounds. He couldn't fathom what's happening, even as the voices in his head continued gnawing away at his sanity. As sudden as these turn of events happened, friendly tanks started going up in orange fireballs. Desolas, with extreme difficulty on his part, moved his head to the source of the projectiles. If he wasn't paralyzed, he would be ordering a tactical shift to help his men weather an alien attack, but once he saw a group of lumbering mechanical monstrosities vaporizing turian infantry and tanks alike with disturbing accuracy and precision, for the first time in his life did Desolas truly felt that the Heirarchy made a terrible, terrible decision.

"Brother!" The general heard his brother's worried voice. He didn't turn to look as he felt gauntleted arms pulling him up and dragging him away from the dreadful machines, further back into the turian line, and into cover.

_**...**_

_**New Larkintown - City Center**_

_**July 04th, 2157**_

_**General Williams/Colonel Shepard/Colonel Thierfelder - commanders of the human ground forces in Shanxi**_

"Forward, you dogs! Into the bloody breach!"

Amidst the battle cries and shouts of his comrades, Shepard raised his shield and stood his ground as mass accelerated bullets were vaporized as they impacted his shield. With quick strides that belied his large size, Shepard crossed the distance between himself and his target, and with a quick flick of his hand, the alien was cut in twine from shoulder to hip. The colonel's next target suffered a shield to the head, forcing him down on one knee. Shepard followed his disorienting attack with a thrust of his sword, impaling the alien's neck. Unsheathing his sword from the alien's vile flesh, Shepard slashed his way deeper into the alien lines. To Shepard's men, the sight of their sword-wielding commander defeating rifle-wielding alien troopers evoked images of primitive human warriors besting their more advanced alien counterparts, inspiring them into acts of greater bravery.

"Don't let up, keep moving!"

Snickering to himself as he vaporized yet another tank, Williams lumbered his way further into the enemy lines. He took great pleasure as his enemies cowered before his vehicle, firing panicked bursts of their weapons into his Crusader in a futile bid to cause some damage. An alien tank, through some sick, perverted version of whatever they had in their twisted minds in place of bravery, stood its ground as it continued firing at Williams in his sectopod. It was buying time for its other comrades to withdraw to better positions, steadfastly staring at its impending doom in the form of a giant mechanical walker. Williams, who wasn't a believer in heroic, dramatic last stands, opted to just reduce the tank into a smouldering wreck then and there.

"They're breaking! Push forward!"

Karlotte, through her psionic abilities, landed headshot after headshot with her plasma rifle. The aliens could only duck when they saw her dark purple armor amidst the chaos. Whenever the aliens find themselves lucky enough to fire at her, their luck immediately turned against them as their bullets were swiftly propelled back to those who fired them. The psionic colonel normally found her skills with firearms to be just enough for most of the jobs she partook in, but this sort of engagement necessitates full utilization of her talents. Aliens turned against their kind, often succeeding in killing a few of their unaware brethren before being gunned down themselves. Alien small-arms fire were rendered ineffective as they passed through Karlotte's general vicinity, as if the projectiles were actively trying to avoid her.

"For Shanxi! For the Federation! To victory!"

**...**

_**New Larkintown - City Center**_

_**July 04th, 2157**_

_**Second Lieutenant Saren - de-facto Motokariya second-in-command**_

"Desolas! What happened to you? Snap out of it!" Saren smacked his older brother across the face. It was futile. The blank, teary-eyed look of Desolas' face persisted. "You need to wake up, Desolas! Your men need you!"

Saren was about to smack his brother again, when he heard whispers. He ignored them and struck Desolas again. He groaned exasperatedly, physical force won't do.

The voices persisted, to Saren's irritation. He was about to drag his brother further back into the turian lines when the disturbing sounds of energy discharges made him think twice about moving out of cover. Setting himself down, he prepared to poke his head out of the rubble to see how close the aliens are to his position.

The younger Arterius squinted from cover. He instantly regretted it when a white lance of energy vaporized a part of his head crest. Resisting the urge to show weakness and yelp in the agonizing pain he was put through, Saren did what a good turian soldier would do when a part of him gets taken away: stand ground and reap vengeance.

Saren jumped out of cover as several squads of Desolas' men passed by. As he ran with his fellow soldiers to the front, energy weapons fire took out quite a few turians as they sprinted. Thick white smoke blanketed the battlefield, blocking vision and preventing Saren from seeing the frontlines.

It was like the Rebellions again, but this time, men were lost before the true nature of their enemy was ever revealed. Once he got to the front, Saren could now view the magnitude of the error that the Hierarchy had made in its full, ugly detail.

A krogan charge is being made, except that there were no krogan; only hulking, humanoid aliens in powered armor, quite literally bashing their way towards the turian line, which looked dangerously in the verge of breaking. The bigger ones were equipped with giant, robotic gauntlets. Saren watched in subdued terror as his fellow soldiers were quite literally tossed into the air after their bodies made contact with giant, ironclad fists. In a way, they looked more synthetic than organic, which only furthered Saren's worries.

Accompanying the synthetic-like aliens were normal-looking aliens. Through a keen, experienced eye, Saren noted that the ones without helmets looked like pale or brown asari, with fluffs of fine, thread-like strands growing from their heads, instead of head fringes. Just like their bigger compatriots, these aliens charged forwards, with dull gray steel bayonets that reached the length of shortswords menacingly attached to their rifles. Turian soldiers were tackled to the ground from where they stood before being bayonetted to the ground repeatedly, their screams of pain and pleas for mercy going completely ignored.

Gigantic war machines stomped behind the alien lines, casually picking off soldier after soldier. And worst of these aliens were the ones equipped with jump packs. They used the thrust provided by their packs to propel themselves towards their prey at ridiculous speeds, either impaling them with their gauntlet mounted claws, or by spearing them in the bayonets they had mounted on their weapons. Alien aircraft swiftly put an end to Marshal Caracalla's attempts to provide air support. They flew at incomprehensible speeds, picking off turian aircraft as if they were stationary targets.

At the center of the alien lines is the leader, it seemed. He looked like a knight straight out of history, sticking out like a sore thumb amongst his comrades. Donned in a suit of dark gray heavy-duty powered armor, wielding an ornate, gigantic sword that crackled with electrical energies in one hand, and an equally ornate electrified shield in another, the alien leader participated in combat just as much as the next man under his command.

Both alien and turian fell as the skirmish raged, but the aliens died in handfuls, while the turians died in droves. As Saren continued firing for all his worth, the turian line eventually broke. At this point, the turians were practically routed, but they didn't act like it. They continued exchanging fire as they ran back. Saren, completely convinced that their endeavor on this colony's surface was lost, gave in to his instincts and ran like his comrades. He only hoped that his brother is still alive where he left him.

While Saren ran, he heard the whispers getting stronger and stronger. Like a good soldier would do, he steadfastly ignored them. Now is simply not the-

_**DON'T LOOK NOW, THE DEVIL IS AT YOUR SHOULDER.**_

Saren's legs immediately halted their sprint. The turian soldier found himself deprived of all control of his body as it moved on its own accord. Turning around, he came face to face with the alien leader, who had his sword raised and ready to fall down like a judge's gavel, about to condemn Saren into oblivion. Through the scowling visage of his helmet, Saren could see the alien's features, eternally contorted into that of anger and contempt.

_**FALL TO YOUR KNEES AND LAMENT,**_

Saren, to his horror, obeyed the voice and kneeled down on the blackened ground. No matter how hard he tried to shake out of his stupor, the voice's hold on his mind and body was like steel.

_**FOR YOU HAVE BEEN CAST ASIDE.**_

The sword descended, sinking into Saren's flesh. Never had he expected that death came to claim him like this.

**...**

_**HWS Indefatigable - In orbit of Shanxi**_

_**July 04th, 2157**_

_**Admiral Lina**_

"Admiral, Lieutenant Victus is trying to hail us from the ground. The console says it's urgent."

Admiral Lina dazedly awoke from her nap. _I think I relaxed a bit more comfortably than I wanted to._ She thought. "Patch him through to me. I'm getting tired of telling that blockhead that he can't take prisoners alive."

"Aye, patching the lieutenant through," The comm officer replied.

Lina sighed before speaking, "Alright, lieutenant. What's this ab-"

"ADMIRAL!" Victus started, causing Lina to flinch. The unnerving sounds of marching, shouting and gunfire could be heard as Victus talked, "The ground force has encountered much heavier resistance than what was expected! Battlegroups Kayagkar, Motokariya and Enkiravost are in full retreat! General Desolas and General Severus are both KIA! Emergency evacuation shuttles are en-route to your ships now, admiral! The landborne invasion has failed, I repeat: we've failed!"

Lina couldn't stop the horrified gasp that came out of her mouth. This is the first time the Hierarchy's soldiers have ever failed at anything since the Rebellions, and this piece of detail is sure to put a black mark on her family's name. As the admiral in charge of the vanguard fleet, she would be shunned and disgraced upon her return to Palaven, with the most likely punishment being meted out to her being a formal execution. Lina worried not of her own life, but she did worry about her family's welfare.

"Fuck," She cursed. "Get out of there as fast as you can, lieutenant. What happened to Desolas' brother?"

"He's in a critical condition ma'am, but he's alive! He had a mental breakdown and tried to kill himself; he primed a grenade and held on to it!" Victus answered.

The admiral slumped on her seat. At least that's a little piece of good news. Despite what she thought of the Arterius brothers, they're still valuable to her as soldiers. Losing Desolas is a painful blow.

"How much time before our reinforcements arrive?" Lina asked her executive officer.

The officer looked at his chrono. Lifting a finger up, he spoke, "Right about... now."

Lina looked over the command bridge's window to behold her allies. She hastily planned a way to convince them to bombard the planet below as retribution for her own impeding death at the hands of her own kind. However, instead of two hundred and twenty turian ships, to everyone's shock and horror, only about seventy disorganized Hierarchy ships emerged from FTL, with each of them having sustained heavy damage to their hulls, with some looking like they're only barely holding together.

"Admiral Nandrakan, this is Admiral Sorex of the Mrrakos Pelagius Legion!" A shrilly, panicked voice was heard from the turians' fleetcom. "We were ambushed by an unknown alien force on our way here. They took out the majority of my fleet, we barely managed to squirm our way from them! What would you have us do?!"

Lina let her mouth hang open in shock as she viewed the devastation wrought on her reinforcements. Obvious plasma burns were omnipresent all over the ships' hulls, with some ships even missing some of their parts. Through her observation, only about thirty-seven cruisers, thirty-two frigates and a single dreadnought remained. "Admiral Sorex, how did this happen, what attacked you?"

"We don't know! We were just preparing a jump when all the sudden, we were attacked with energy weapons from long range! There's even reports that a colossal dreadnought and a giant, mechanical _squid_ are working together! It all happened so fa-"

The subjects in hand chose this particular moment to make their entrance. In a fleeting second, a huge alien fleet appeared out of FTL, before immediately starting to lay waste upon the turian fleet. Standing out amongst the innumerable alien ships is a dreadnought that appeared to be larger than three dreadnoughts put together, bristling with energy weapons and other sorts of weaponry. But the super-dreadnought is nothing compared to the bizarre abomination that is the "ship" next to it.

It was a giant, tentacled vessel. Shaped almost exactly like an aquatic creature made out of jet black reinforced ship plating and mounted with plasma weapons on the hull and each tentacle, the vessel was like the stuff of psychadelic nightmares. In addition to the weapons attached all over the squid-like vessel's hull, an oversized plasma cannon sat on where its "mouth" supposed to be, undoubtedly its main weapon.

That does it, Lina thought. This foolish endeavor is lost, with the only feasible option for the turian fleet remnants only pointed towards a complete retreat back to Palaven. She didn't care for her own execution, she cared more about the lives that will be lost resulting from a complete annihilation of two turian fleets.

"Victus?!" She shouted over at the communications console after shoving the awestruck comm officer away from his station. "How many shuttles have made it out of that planet? We're being hammered up here, we need every last man down there on board a ship, now!"

"We've got about a hundred more shuttles still planetside, admiral!" Victus responded, between two instances of shooting. "We're evacuating as fast as we can, give us twenty more minutes!"

"We'll be dead in ten, lieutenant! Get MOVING!"

"What?" Victus confusedly asked, momentarily halting his fire. "What's happening up there?"

Lina was gripping the console so hard, that cracks started showing up on the screen. "Stop talking, Adrien! Haul ass!"

_**...**_

_**XWS The Redeemer - Armageddon-class hiveship - Drop pod bay, left flank  
**_

_**July 04th 2157**_

**_Captain Gregor "Sparks" Savage - Leader of the squad in boarding pod #17, Great Ethereal War veteran_**

"All personnel assigned to drop pods, prepare to die!"

Captain Savage sighed. This isn't the first time a wise guy gets assigned to the _Redeemer_'s PA system.

"... I mean launch."

The MEC leader stifled a laugh. Someone must've kicked the guy's ass.

Savage's drop pod, like the twenty-eight others like it, was to be used as a boarding vessel by three regular agents, an Aug trooper, a Psi operative and a MEC trooper, which is him in this case. The _Redeemer_ had been tasked with boarding the primary dreadnought, clear the alien ship of hostiles and secure high-ranking alien captives for interrogation back at XCOM HQ. The ships affiliated with XCOM only amounted to a hundred, including the _Old One,_ but the Federation possessed some seven hundred ships, which includes the _Annihilation. _Federation ships would be doing the bulk of the heavy fighting while XCOM vessels would go around the back and do some damage of their own.

"Boarding pods are launching in thirty seconds." A synthesized voice replaced the human announcer, confirming Savage's thoughts. "Twenty seconds."

Savage gripped his YCS/153 coil cannon in anticipation of the one thing he missed the most from more than a century ago. Unlike the Kingfisher particle cannons of old, the YCS is charged with electrical energies, giving it a moderate boost to the damage it could cause to machines and vehicles.

"Ten seconds."

The Psi operative, Zaeed Massani, sensed that his teammates, sans Savage, were all gripping their weapons in nervousness. "Ah, it's just another "in-and-out" op, you tossers. Suck it up." Sensing no improvements, only a sharp, further increase in anxiety, Zaeed groaned as he used his Gift to manually remove everybody's fears, which seemed to work. "There ya go, you little girls, you."

The rest of the breaching team gave Zaeed stern looks, to which he could only smirk. "Well, you guys were all-"

"Launching pods. Godspeed, agents."

The folds to the hull of the hiveship were cast to the side, revealing the drop pods. With thud-like sounds, the pods were launched into the enemy dreadnought one by one. Some of the pods were unlucky, though. Instead of reaching their objectives, they were reduced to slag by incoming projectiles, or were shot down by GARDIAN batteries and enemy fighters. Still, the sheer numbers of the pods compensated for those that were lost.

As the drop pod streaked across the space between the _Redeemer_ and the enemy dreadnought, Savage could only grin in anticipation. He had waited long for a day like this, and now, that day has finally landed on his lap. It was not everyday that a MEC trooper's sole purpose in life returned in full force, ready to be re-experienced again in its full, glorious detail.

_**...**_

_**HWS Ciyempre Eyn Preasidio - Command Bridge**_

_**July 04th 2157**_

_**Admiral Trebonius Sorex - admiral in charge of the Mrrakos Pelagius Legion detachment to Relay 314**_

The squid-vessel enveloped one of the larger turian cruisers in an ironclad grip. The turian fleetcom channel is bombarded with the panicked reports of the cruiser crew.

_It's doing it again!_ Sorex contemplated. He once saw no less than fifty-seven of his own ships being squeezed into pieces by the strange alien vessel, and more often than not, it's too late for this one's crew. But, he could never lose hope. "I want everyone in a position to assist to get that thing off the _Centurion_'s back! Get in close and use your GARDIANs! It's the only thing that wo-"

The cruiser was crushed into several slices by the alien vessel. All reports streaming from the ruined ship were cut off abruptly as the crew were undoubtedly either were crushed or spaced.

"Titans damn this race..." Sorex exclaimed, in a fashion only audible to himself. "Gather all ships and defend Admiral Nandrakan's flank! They're still trying to-

Loud simultaneous crashes emanating from the lower decks interrupted the admiral. Everything was silent for seconds, until the terrible sounds came.

Booming energy discharges and sporadic turian gunfire sounds were made, loud enough to be heard by the command staff at the upper decks.

"What the hell was that?!" Sorex questioned his executive officer, who responded as he clutched the reports datapad on shaking talons,

"Several levels are reporting that they've engaged the aliens. They've appeared to have boarded our ship using crude breaching pods containing enemy personnel. How the bastards managed to stay relatively intact after being propelled at lethal speeds is... beyond me."

Sorex narrowed his eyes on the officer. "Spare me the thrice-damned details. I want to know if they're being repulsed or not, captain."

The officer nodded shakily, "I'm afraid not, sir. Not a single report showed any promise, all security forces around the ship are trying hard to keep themselves alive. What's worse, several groups of enemy personnel are reported to have been encroaching towards the command bri-"

The doors to the command bridge swung open, revealing a heavily wounded member of the _Preasidio'_s security detail, clutching at the side of the door with bloodied talons. "We've been... boarded..." He collapsed, and the command staff came rushing to his attention.

"Soldier! Soldier, can you hear me?" Sorex asked the guard just as medical personnel started working on him. "What's going on down there?"

"The... Colossi Themselves..." The guard gestured to the gaping plasma burn on his chest. "They're... in league... with the aliens..."

The guard's body lay limp, just as the medics started slowing down.

_What had the Hierarchy done?_ Sorex thought. _We've just reignited the Rebellions... _

"Admiral, we need a plan. The aliens are getting closer." A soldier said, datapad in hand. "We don't have much time before they arrive in full force, we need to hurry."

Sorex solemnly nodded. "That's dire news, indeed." The admiral went back to the current matter at hand, not knowing if he'll live to see Palaven after this is over. "Guards, seal the doors. I want everyone in this room with two hands and at least one functioning eye to grab a rifle, we're about to have some company, soon."

"What?" A tech officer disbelievingly asked. "We're going to just seal ourselves to our deaths? The aliens have access to plasma weaponry, they'll just blast through the doors in roughly half the time it takes for us to seal it!"

Sorex's temper flared in full force. He grabbed hold of the officer's collar and lifted him off the ground. "Yes, soldier. We're going to _die... _or worse," He threw the officer to the floor, who was helped up by his comrades reluctantly. "As for the rest of you in this room, I don't know about what're your thoughts on this, but I've already accepted my fate, gladly and whole-heartedly. You can either cower as the life gets sapped from your body, or you could do as I say, grab a rifle and take as many of these Spirits-damned bastards with you. I know that a true turian would do the latter. The former can go explain their weakness to the Spirits Themselves."

A chorus of nods were all that answered the admiral. There were no cheers, no applause. Everyone gloomily accepted what the Spirits have ordained for them.

Several agonizing minutes passed as the command staff waited for the agents of death to take them to the void. Screams, panicky reports and mechanical, unhinged laughter were all that came from the _Preasidio_'s ship-wide comms. It was so frequent, that Sorex ordered the comms to be cut off completely. Finally, the time appears to have come.

Coarse, ear-shattering sounds of electrical discharges were heard coming from outside the door, which was followed by agonized yelps and drawn-out screams of pain from the unfortunate souls left outside, promptly followed by the complete opposite: bouts of raspy sounding laughter and snickering from the aliens. _I never thought the krogan reached this part of the galaxy... _Sorex thought.

An unnervingly silent, agonizingly suspenseful minute passed, before a crashing _thud_ echoed throughout the command bridge, indicating that something outside the doors is trying to get inside. Sorex's grip on his assault rifle was painful, to say the least. It also pains him to see his fellow turians quivering in either fear or anticipation, but it was relieving to see that the guards remained professional to the inevitable end.

A second thud rang out, and this time, a giant, mechanical, three-fingered hand plunged through the midsection of the double doors. It appeared to be sharpened around the fingertips, and it also seemed to be stained with dark blue turian blood. The hand tried prying the doors to the side, but the command staff promptly opened fire on it, even as Sorex ordered not to, as he _wanted_ the hand to pry the doors open, so he could fire at whom it belonged to perfectly.

The hand buckled and squirmed away as mass-accelerated grains of metal impacted it.

The command staff seemed to relax their stances, but that was before the owner of the hand revealed itself, by crashing through the bulkhead next to the doors, into the command bridge. It was a bipedal, half-mechanical hybrid. Covered in a fully-enclosed, enormous suit of powered armor, the unholy hybrid of organic flesh and machine shook off the bulkhead it bashed through.

Sorex didn't need to order his crew to unleash their weapons onto the alien. Those who had devoted their entire lives to commanding away from soldiers, and not actual soldiering were terribly bad shots, often missing the towering giant by meters. Sorex himself could admit that he's not quality soldier material. He had abandoned that life several years ago.

The alien screeched something in its language, putting a giant hand on the side of its head as it was peppered by small-arms fire. It didn't bother taking cover; it immediately fired upon a nearby officer with its strange firearm-like weapon. The weapon seemed to charge up before emitting a whitish-blue beam, which was coated in electrical energies. The officer was reduced to a smoking, blackened mess on the floor, after having his whole body coursing with absurd amounts of electricity a moment earlier.

Sorex and his men kept up the fire, even after more of the aliens' comrades showed up from the hole in the bulkhead it made.

The admiral primed a grenade and tossed it into a group of aliens. To his surprise, the foremost alien swiftly snatched the explosive in mid-air, before tossing it into a nearby turian formation, all in under two seconds. The aliens then proceeded to slaughter the exposed turians in machinelike, fluid motions.

Over the course of the battle, for some inexplicable reason, turians started turning against their allies, often at the worst moment possible. Sorex himself was starting to hear menacing voices coursing around his head, but he could only ignore them as the gunfight raged on. Two minutes had passed, and all but Sorex and a dozen and a half of the command staff remained.

As the aliens pressed the advantage, one of the bulkier ones started making a move towards Sorex's position. Further scrutiny of the alien from the admiral revealed that he possessed a boxlike device clipped to his belt. Earlier, he saw the same alien using the device to incapacitate some of his men. It seems that these aliens are taking captives, after all, and an admiral is sure to be a good target for capture.

In desperation, the admiral began priming another grenade. If the aliens wanted a prize, he wouldn't let them the satisfaction. However, he did not account for a second alien to tackle him to the ground from behind, sending the grenade to explode elsewhere. Sorex tried to struggle away from the alien holding him down, but he was violently put to the ground by a steelclad gauntlet to the side of his head. The alien then grabbed hold of Sorex's fringe, picked him up and slammed his head into a console. Disoriented, the admiral began to reach for a spare pistol on his belt, but the alien noticed.

Sorex's head was reduced to a bruised, bloodied unrecognizable ruin as it was slammed into the console's screen repeatedly. He was already missing some of his horns and his left mandible is on the verge of being torn off. The alien only stopped when Sorex already looked like he was about to die. The alien threw the admiral to the ground in an inelegant heap. Sorex could only groan as one of the aliens trudged up to him and pointed one of the boxlike devices directly at his head.

The last thing he heard as he passed out was the sound of alien laughter. _No better than krogan._

**...**

**_HWS The Indefatigable _  
**

**_July 04th 2157_**

**_Admiral Lina _**

This is it, Lina thought. The last of the ground-based forces had been evacuated from the wretched colony.

"I want this fleet out of here!" She practically screamed at her navigator.

"We're working on it, ma'am!" The navigator responded.

_**...**_

_**FNWS Annihilation - the Federation's flagship**_

_**July 04th, 2157**_

_**Director Faust**_

Faust, with a cigarette in hand, watched as the _Old One_ closed in on the last remaining alien dreadnought. His forces had already captured the one that they tried capturing earlier, and the rest of the alien fleet seemed to be doomed for a horrible death at the hands of the Federation Navy.

"Quite a sight, isn't it, old friend?"

Faust looked to his side and found Admiral Draynor, looking at the scene unfolding in front of him at the safety of the _Annihilation_'s plasma-proof windows. "This is the first time humanity has ever turned back an alien force without taking anything out of their technology. I think it's safe to declare that we're ready, if the ethereals ever so choose to return."

Faust only nodded in agreement, choosing that words were for another time.

Suddenly, just as the _Old One _was about to envelope its mechanical tentacles around the alien dreadnought, all remaining ships from the alien fleet all vanished into FTL. They had retreated.

"Sir!" Captain Ramirez, Draynor's XO, called to the two men, over to his console. "The aliens are trying to get away, we can go on pursuit now, on your orders, admiral!"

Draynor only crossed his arms and shook his head. "They might be pulling back to a more fortified position, or they might pulling an old trick the ethereals used on us, where they're just hiding their most advanced weaponry away for use later. We aren't going on pursuit, captain. Have the ships form up a position around the colony in case they decide to come back."

"As you wish... sir." The captain responded reluctantly.

Faust, wasting no time, called for the second-highest officer he assigned to the Shanxi-Theta detachment he sent out through his comm bead.

_**...**_

_**New Larkintown Outskirts - Shanxi Colony**_

_**July 04th, 2157**_

_**Colonel Shepard**_

The colonel surged forward, shield raised. The aliens continued firing in desperation, however. Still, with superior weapons and training at his side, Shepard will prevail.

He bashed an alien heroically blocking his charge away, which was quickly finished off by General Williams' sectopod crushing him underfoot. The alien formation started buckling, their resolves utterly crushed after seeing their endeavor crumble into ruins, coupled by their abandonment by their comrades, who flew to safety inside evac shuttles.

The first alien he reached met a gruesome end: he had both his arms severed by quick slashes from Shepard before being knocked to the ground by a shield bash, which was followed up by a sword to the head. The second was thoroughly singed by Williams' fusion lance, and the third and fourth ones fell to their knees and clutched their heads in agony, looking skywards with their mandibled mouths open. Shepard finished the third one off by swiftly separating his head from his shoulders, before grabbing the fourth gibbering one off the ground and throwing him onto a pack of his berserker troops.

"All yours, men." He simply said.

The berserkers immediately went to work, to which Shepard averted his eyes as he walked back to Williams and Karlotte.

Karlotte looked somewhat repulsed, and Williams, with hands on his hips, looked on approvingly. "That'll be the last of them."

Shepard slid his faceplate up. "Indeed. Shanxi should be safe now."

"The Federation ships would be here for a while," Karlotte stated. "They need to make sure if the aliens would immediately counter-attack."

Suddenly, Shepard's comm bead issued a series of pings, to which he slid his gauntleted hand to his ear and responded to the call. Seconds passed, before he looked back over to his two comrades.

"Well, what's that about?" Williams asked, to which Shepard only walked over in front of all his men.

The colonel planted his sword on the ground before addressing his troops, who all fell silent.

"Men, I've just received word from above, from Director Faust himself." Shepard inhaled sharply. "We've fought, we've bled and some of us had died for the defense of this colony. Soldiers, both Federation personnel and XCOM agents were killed. They sacrificed their lives to ensure that the human race could successfully fight off these unholy, soulless wretches away from Shanxi, and for that, we hold them in great honor... with high regard. We hold them as the Heroes of Shanxi, to be looked up to by the soldiers of both the Federation, and XCOM."

A hearty cheer rang out amongst the triumphant defenders of Shanxi, even General Williams joined in. But with a hand raised up in a gesture of silence from Shepard, the crowd went silent once more. "Thankfully, those who had since given up their lives to ensure that Shanxi remained in human hands could look down on us approvingly," With a mighty tug, the colonel unsheathed his sword from the ground and speared it skywards in a triumphant gesture.

"For we claim victory this day!"

The cheer came right back, more mirthful than ever. Soldiers, both Federation and XCOM congratulated each other in a great show of comradeship. As the soldiers went on, Shepard had already taken up his usual position with Williams and Karlotte, away from the celebrating crowd.

"Nice little speech you made there, Shepard." The general complimented the colonel. "You may be snotty government-sanctioned kids who always get the best toys before the real men do, but it sure is great to have you by our side."

Shepard and Karlotte laughed at the older man's backhandedness. "XCOM had always been behind humanity's side, general." Shepard stated. "We just like to keep ourselves hidden from the public."

Williams nodded. "Yeah about that, why do you kids keep hiding yourselves? A lot of people from the civilian population would like to meet the descendants of the soldiers who saved their ancestors back in 2015, you know."

"The negatives in revealing our existence to the public severely outweigh the positives, Mister Williams." Karlotte said. "Back then, our predecessors did a lot of things that could land ordinary men a swift military execution, and not to mention that they often get to choose who gets abducted and who gets to be saved. A lot of those abductees' loved ones would likely be quite mad at us."

"But it's been, what, a century and a half?" Williams said, somewhat offended. "You do realize that those angry loved ones might be already dead and buried by now. I think it's quite safe for you kids to get out there and tell everyone who you are."

Shepard mournfully shook his head. "I'm afraid it's not our decision to see to that. Our director might not approve of your suggestions, general."

Giving up, Williams' shrugged his shoulders in resignation. "Ah, well. At least you can sleep easy knowing that I think you kids are good enough for the public."

The colonel did a half-smile at the general. "We appreciate it, general. We must report back to XCOM HQ, so if you'll excuse us, we'll be rallying the remaining agents we have before heading off-world. Farewell, general."

"Hey wait," Williams called out, halting Shepard and Karlotte. "Could I at least have a way to contact the two of you? Shanxi might need some of your organization's help in the future."

Shepard considered the general's offer. "Well, our old contact in this colony was killed during the alien bombardment of the capital city, and we do need some eyes in the colony..."

"Consider me your new contact, then." Williams offered, to which Shepard nodded in approval. "Say, do you two have any families of some sort?"

Shepard and Karlotte were taken aback by the general's sudden question. Shepard answered, out of reflex, "Well, we do have a child on the way."

The general raised a scarred eyebrow. "What do you mean by "we"? You mean her?" He gestured to Karlotte, to which Shepard slowly nodded. The general crossed his arms as a response. "You let your pregnant partner into a warzone?"

For once, Shepard was at a loss for words. He could only manage, "I... I tried to talk her down, but she wouldn't listen."

"I'll speak for myself, Jon." Karlotte chidingly said. Shepard promptly went silent, as he tried unjamming the sudden foot he found in his mouth. "It's fine, really. I mostly went for psionics, so it's no big deal. Besides, with a big, meaty target like Jonathan in front of me, there's absolutely no chance an alien bullet will touch me."

Williams laughed. "Whatever you say then, ma'am. Anyway, I asked because my son's wife is due any day now. I wanted to see how XCOM agents handle civilian business." He half-joked.

"You must be the strangest, most eccentric Federation general I've ever met." Shepard stated, to which Karlotte and the general laughed.

**...**

**CODEX: _I. The XSS Old One_**

The _Old One_ is an ambitious, unorthodox project that was started immediately after the Great Ethereal War by an eccentric XCOM field scientist directly under Dr. Raymond Shen's command. The idea behind the _Old One _is that it could serve as a spaceborne terror unit that could also infiltrate with its own cloaking module if need be, functioning like the ethereal-made Seeker attack drone. Immediately dismissed as impractical, the _Old One_ project wasn't completely scrapped, like it was told to have been. Secretly, some of the more radical XCOM scientists and engineers began improving over the original design, before finally coming up with a more practical alternative, which doesn't function as an infiltrator/terror unit, but as an all-around, anti-ship vessel. The _Old One _has been completed in 2101, where it entered service in XCOM as a "secret weapon". Additionally, the _Old One_ isn't crewed by operators. It is equipped with an advanced, fully sentient artificial intelligence, capable of performing complicated tactics in the heat of battle. The _Old One _had also been observed to enjoy terraforming desolate planets as its pastime, often to the joy - and bafflement - of some explorers who had enough luck to spot the sentient vessel as it went on its rounds in Federation-owned space.

_**II. Tyrant-pattern power sword**_

Made out of tempered Ilyushinite alloy and coated in a deadly radiance of electrical energies, the Tyrant is a one-of-a-kind weapon often favored by Federation soldiers who had specialized in the ways of the Templar. The Ilyushinite alloy composition of the blade allows for the blade's edge to be sharpened to a single molecule without the need to resharpen it again after continued use, and the energy field sheathing the blade allow for it to carve through flesh, bone and most forms of armor plate alike, making the Tyrant a highly effective close combat weapon, one that in one strike, often causes lethal injuries to those who opposed the Templar holding it.

_**III. Roshan-pattern force shield**_

The perfect offhand compliment to the Tyrant, the Roshan was proven to be capable of soaking up damage that would normally reduce fortified buildings into ruins. The Roshan is equipped with an internal gravitic energy field generator that renders all but the most powerful attacks significantly ineffective. More often than not, experienced Templars sharpened the edges of their force shields to make them more deadly in close combat, and as such, most force shield operators had taken to using their shields as actual weapons much more than using them for their intended use, much to the chagrin of their commanding officers.

_**IV. Human expansion and developement - Part 1**_

Since the discovery of mass relays in the late 2030's, humans from Earth had first been given the opportunity to start a new life outside the planet they've always called home. About twenty percent of Earth's humans had volunteered to become colonists, forever leaving their home planet to live in recently colonized worlds. During the 2070's, the Federation military, to promote a mindset that mirrored history's "Age of Discovery", had the standard-issue military uniforms they hand out to their navy officers to resemble the ones that historical admirals and captains use, most prominently greatcoats and gold-trimmed tricorne hats. This mindset leaked to the general public, and soon, human colonists were often seen wearing clothing that mimicked Federation Navy officers. However, since the Shanxi-Theta relay incident, the Federation got rid of their current uniform design to make way for more utilitarian, modern uniforms that actually served several purposes to the officers wearing them.

By the end of 2100, human colonies have reached past half a hundred colonies. The combined population of all human colonies plus Earth had been estimated to be more than thirty billion as of 2100, and virtually all technology gained from alien races were improved immeasurably. Weapons technology gained from both the zudjari race and the ethereal race had often been repurposed to serve civilian needs, but since conflict and war still constantly arose in the form of the occasional EXALT terrorist attack, fringe colony rebellions and small-scale civil wars, weapons tech had never degraded past their 21st century state.

_**...**_

"Templar" is a new specialization I've made, like "Soldier" or "Vanguard" or "Infiltrator". However, the Templar specializes in wearing heavy armor, close combat weaponry, and a bit of assault rifle training thrown in to the mix. May have psionic powers or not (Colonel Jonathan Shepard doesn't have psionics).

Oh, and because I fudged up with the details of the timeline, Shepard (as in, _the_ Shepard, not the one you read here; it's the unborn child) is younger by 2-3 years. _Dammit_.

Also, remember when I wrote that Element Zero is now Element One? I've doubled back on that, Element One is now Element Zero again. I really hate using zeros in naming things, but on grounds of practicality (and some people got confused, asking me if hydrogen fuels mass effect technology now. Element 1 (one) in the periodic table of elements is hydrogen), I'm changing it back to Element Zero.

Shepard's (the one you read here, father to the ME series' Shepard) appearance, armor and weapons are based on WH40K's Grey Knights. Don't worry, I hate Matt Ward too.

ALSO, this fic is NOT a freakin' stomp-fic. I'd hate my own story if it turns into that, I hate having myself indulge in the fad of "Humanity! Fuck Yeah!". Seriously, no matter how strong and technologically advanced a race is, it's no match for a whole group of different races ganging up on it at the same time. Just ask the Reapers.

I'm going for a smart option, and that involves diplomacy, even if humans had to be intolerably rude while doing so.

Don't worry. If the Council asks humanity to join it and give up their tech while doing so, humanity's answer would be: heck no.

_**...**_

Daedal: I'd rather not use the term "freaking sword and shield". That sword can cut vehicles in two with a single downward slash, and that shield can tank damage that can take out fortified buildings and then some. I'm a big WH40K fan, that's why these things are here. It trumps realism in my head every time. So, to all you brothers and sisters out there: the Emprah (Emperor, to you hardcore 40K fans out there) protects! Ave Imperator!

Guest 01: Outsiders as infantry? Hmm... sounds tactical, but I might nerf that if it becomes too convenient and gamebreaking. Good suggestion, I'll see what I can do.

Explorator: Well met, fellow Imperial! As a very radical (very, _very_ radical) Inquisitor, I appreciate all the work your kind has done for mankind! By the way, find any Chaos artifacts on your travels, or perhaps in that rogue trader's ship? And you've got an Eldar child with you? Such a marvellous specimen, that is! Does it have any Chaos artifacts on its person?

Anyway, back to your concerns, I've buffed the Reapers significantly to avoid having our race too overpowered, that it pains the eyes. I won't have humans just stomping everyone in their way without any sort of significant casualties at all. I'm not that sort of bad writer. I won't spoil anything too much, but as to why the Reapers get this buff, it involves the ethereal race making a return.

Guest 02: To clarify, Reapers are cuttlefish-shaped. The _Old One_ is a squid/shark sentient starship that strangles other ships as its _modus operandi. _The _Old One_ is based on the Seeker enemy type you encounter on XCOM:EW in pairs, strangling your squadsight snipers to death. Nothing to do with Reapers, I'm afraid.

CommissarPancake: Hello, comrade commissar! Allow me to present you a gift from my personal reserves - an ancient laspistol tainted with the soul of a greater daemon of Khorne! It fires pure warpfire, and should help you kill your enemies just as fast as it takes you to kill your own men!

On to your point, no (although that would be freakin' awesome). I'm afraid posting links in this website doesn't work, so I guess you'll have to google "XCOM Seeker" to see what the _Old One_ is based on.

Rinshi: That won't happen for a long time. I'm still having fun showing off humanity's martial prowess. Heads will still roll, at least until the fourth chapter, or so.


	3. Mankind Rises

Note: First of all, I'd like to apologize for disappearing. Since it was my school's bimonthly vacation, I gleefully spent the hours playing video games. Thankfully, that won't be the case now. School vacation's over, so I quickly cranked this chapter out in the middle of english class. Here you go.

And also, I saw a _disturbing _amount of reviews and private messages concerning the Old One, linking the damn thing with Reapers. Like I've written in the last chapter, no. The Old One is NOT linked to the Reapers in any way. The Old One is a giant, spaceborne Seeker, and is in general, squid-shaped. Reapers are cuttlefish-shaped.

EDIT: 23/05/14, I just learned more about the 'moderate guest reviews' function that this site offers. I never read about it, and only concluded that it must be some sort of function that automatically deletes guest reviews. I turned it on to deter trolls, but some people were upset that they can't review anonymously. It should be off now.

* * *

_**The Council Chambers – The Citadel**_

_**July 05**__**th**__**, 2157 – 1300 hours**_

_**Councilor Selissa Tevos – Councilor for the asari race**_

"You seem quite vexed."

Councilor Sparatus stopped pacing to glare at his asari counterpart. "I'm not," He immediately said as a response. "There's just… there's just been some complications with the Hierarchy's recent orders. It's really nothing to worry about." He went back to pacing.

Tevos narrowed her eyes as she observed Sparatus' repetitive back-and-forth marching. From the many years the asari councilor had spent with the turian councilor, she knew that whenever he paced, there's something grievously wrong with something. "Expecting another child, Davian?" She deadpanned.

Sparatus forced a laugh out of his mouth. The ill-fitting, unnatural sound of it sent shivers down Tevos' spine. "No, I'm afraid. This is something much more important than—" Suddenly, his omni-tool started beeping. Instantly, the turian councilor ran off to a more remote spot in the Council Chambers, presumably to receive a call that he wouldn't want Tevos or Keldron to hear about.

"He's doing it again," Tevos said to her salarian counterpart. "He's trying to hide something from us."

"Quite so." Councilor Keldron responded punctually. "Usually, I'd say this most likely concerns turian military matters, given how they always act, but the councilor seems to act more paranoid and reclusive. I imagine it's a personal matter, so I think we should stay out of it."

However, Tevos wanted to know what's wrong, so she stepped down from her seat, towards her turian colleague, who remained oblivious to her presence.

"—yes, of course! She should never have been placed in charge of the vanguard fleet! Curse the barefaced whore that spawned her! This is an outrage!" Tevos, with her arms crossed, observed Sparatus heatedly converse with someone on his omni-tool's communicator. "I don't even think she deserves a trial. Can you imagine the weight of this crime she has committed? An image that stood for a thousand years – shattered! What she deserves is a long, drawn-out execution! No, her _whole family _deserves some form of punishment for bringing up a colossal failure of an admiral!"

It wasn't long before the asari councilor pieced together everything. The only image that stood for a millennium that could be possibly shattered is the image that the turians had never lost an engagement since the Krogan Rebellions. That means that either the turian navy had lost a battle with a particularly powerful band of Terminus pirates, or they've made contact with an as-of-yet unknown alien race and subsequently got defeated. With quick, graceful strides, Tevos crossed the distance between her and Sparatus, tapping his shoulder to get his attention afterwards.

Sparatus body immediately went rigid when he felt the fingers that knocked the back of his shoulder. He warily turned around and gasped when he saw Tevos' form, eyes narrowed, head lowered and arms crossed. "…Selissa? Something I could help you with?" He meekly asked.

"Don't try that on me, Davian." Tevos responded. "I heard everything, and looks like your race's fleet finally found a match. Tell me, _who _exactly did you have the misfortune of picking a fight with?"

The turian councilor flew into a rage. "No one!" He barked, but to her credit, Tevos remained as stern as before. "This is none of your race's damned concern, Tevos. Stay out of this."

Tevos rolled her eyes. "It's my job to see to galactic affairs. An unknown military force that successfully defeated the supposedly undefeatable turian fleet is surely a matter that warrants my concern, councilor." She countered acidly.

The turian councilor's mandibles flared in exasperated rage. "Aren't there more important matters that should worry you more than something that my people – and my people alone – should resolve ourselves? Can't you see that this is too small of a problem to bother you if I'm keeping it to myself? For the last time, I'm not telling you anything until this problem resolves itself!"

"You know, this is big news, Sparatus. A matter so significant as this should be in the headlines soon…" Tevos stated. "It's for the good of everyone if you'd tell me everything about this "small problem" of yours, so I can begin preparations for the appropriate course of action." Tevos' voice turned steely, a sign that she was growing impatient; and when Councilor Tevos gets impatient, something unpleasant will insue.

Sparatus, for all his years serving with the asari councilor, knew all too much about this. Backed to a corner with no place to seek solace, he sighed in defeat. However, he isn't keen on letting out information without the primarchs' authorization. He'd rather deal with the consequences of incurring Tevos' wrath than see his good name tarnished amongst his people. "I'm sorry, Tevos. You'll get nothing from me today."

With heavy feet, and an even heavier heart, Sparatus began to trudge back to his seat, leaving Tevos alone.

…

_**The Primarch's Office – Palaven **_

_**July 05**__**th**__**, 2157 – 1500 hours**_

_**Primarch Valerius Corvinius – primarch in charge of the Apien Crest Cluster**_

Trebia's fading sunlight poured from the windows, into the seated form of Primarch Valerius. On this day, the primarch is keenly waiting for a certain admiral in charge of the fleet sent to Relay 314. On the outside, Valerius is wearing his most calm, unruffled face, but on the inside, he's seething with serene wrath.

_How could she?_ The primarch pondered as his talons rapped his desk in a pattern mirroring a melody he liked. It's one of the ways he could relieve stress. _For the first time in more than millennium did a turian fleet ever got itself bested, and by a primitive fleet, no less! _His teeth began grinding each other._ There must be some sort of grave incompetence in Nandrakan's part. It _has_ to be._ Valerius groaned as he looked at his chrono. _She's late. All the more reason to give her the death penalty._

The primarch continued tapping on his desk for several minutes, until the old-fashioned, weathered steel door to his office swung open.

"Primarch Corvinius," In came Admiral Aureliana, who was still wearing her bloodstained Hierarchy Navy uniform. From the looks of her, she looked like she hadn't slept at all. "I've been hassled by thrice-damned news crews on the way here. I apologize for being behind schedule."

"Admiral Nandrakan." Valerius greeted sternly. "You may seat yourself." He didn't bother gesturing to a seat. To her credit, the admiral remained standing, as a silent gesture of declination.

"I don't deserve comfort, primarch. You and I both know that." She said, seemingly in a resigned monotone. "Could we just get this over with, and skip to the part where you have me publicly humiliated before having me shot like a tedrani in front of everyone? I've already made my peace with the Spirits."

The primarch rigidly shook his head. "It'll come to that. First, I want you to tell me what happened out there. How so a powerful, ultramodern fleet like yours came to be defeated by mere primitives, for one." His tone is like that of a parent reprimanding a child that did wrong. "They've most likely barely ever set foot out of their home planet, eve—"

Suddenly, Lina closed the distance gap between her and the primarch, put both of her hands on his desk and locked him in a withering stare. Valerius flinched as he leaned back, reclining on his seat.

"Listen here, you barefaced, scum-sucking fuckhead," The admiral's tone was barely above a whisper, but it contained enough contempt to thicken the atmosphere. "Is your head so far up your ass that you can't see what just damn well happened? They. Were. Not. PRIMITIVES!" Lina's earlier low tone progressed into full-fledged hate-filled screaming. By now, Valerius considered calling security, fearing for his own safety.

However, Admiral Lina isn't done yet. "They've got _directed energy weapons_, primarch. Energy fucking weapons! They went right through my soldiers' kinetic barriers, all but outright killing them in a single Spirits-damned shot! And it's not just their infantry, too. When their response fleet arrived, they all but obliterated my fleet and the reinforcements you sent! I'm not even gonna explain how they used drones that could kill whole platoons of our soldiers as their throwaway, disposable units, and how seventeen of their ships destroyed three times their number in my own ships and heavily damaged most of what remained!" Lina looked to be on the verge of doing something drastic, but she deflated in short order.

"What I'm saying is," She involuntarily sighed, cutting herself off. "What I'm saying is that we just started a war that could potentially be much worse than the Krogan Rebellions. _Much worse_."

Valerius' hand was hovering close to the alarm button hidden under his desk, but he kept himself from pressing it as soon as he heard Lina say the word "directed energy weapons", and how the Hierarchy had somehow gotten itself into a bigger mess than the Rebellions themselves. Slowly, the primarch retracted his hand, letting it fall.

"I'm afraid you still left me in the dark, admiral. Could you please explain everything that happened?" He coolly asked, his earlier nervousness already dissipating.

This time, Lina collapsed on the seat in front of Valerius' desk. She took a moment to collect herself before speaking, "My fleet was decimated by an enemy force that's far superior than ours. Not in numbers, but in everything else concerning warfare."

The primarch's eye twitched, no doubt because of Lina's words. The admiral noticed, so she pressed on. "That's right, primarch. We're don't possess the strongest military force anymore, as of now. These aliens have us technologically beat in all aspects of combat. Whatever damage our military could do, they'll do much better and in much less time. Their ground-based troops are all equipped with armored exoframes and plasma-spewing firearms, but there's also been reports that some of the aliens preferred to use _swords_ and gauntlet-mounted claws of all things."

"Swords and claws, admiral?" Valerius incredulously asked. "Mere blades can't penetrate our troops' armor, last I recall. They often broke in half upon contact. And last I've heard, only the krogan actually took swords into battle, and that's from a thousand years ago."

Lina raggedly laughed, sending shivers down the primarch's spine. "Tell that to the men who witnessed their colleagues get slashed apart in one glancing strike. Whatever that thing's made of, it just eats through a standard infantryman's armor." The admiral laughed again, like she wasn't explaining a deadly serious matter, but she was telling a joke. "That's not even the worst part. Some of the aliens were literal walking Council law violations; they've got enough cybernetics to make them look synthetic, and through some field autopsies that my men performed, they noted that some of the aliens' genetic structures have been radically restructured, essentially turning them into super-soldiers through genetic augmentation.

Lina finally stopped laughing. Her voice taking a more solemn tone. "What's worse, during the heat of battle, for some inexplicable reason, some of the troops suddenly turned on each other, like these aliens could somehow manipulate our soldiers' minds. In fact, some of the surviving soldiers reported hearing whispers as they fought."

Valerius looked more and more agitated as Lina talked. _She must have gone insane… this sounds too ridiculous to believe._

"What a wonderfully creative mind you've got on you, admiral." He sarcastically drawled. "Did you come up with that on your way up here?"

Lina scowled at the primarch. "Here you are, doing what you barefaced politicians are oh, so known for. I don't care how much you mock me, or how do you plan on getting rid of me in the next few hours, but I _beseech_ you, primarch. if you want to preserve the turian way of life, then hear what I've got to say!"

Valerius put his hands up in a calming, albeit mocking gesture. "Alright, alright. Let's see what sort of mindless nonsense have you got to say. After all, these are your final hours. I won't deny you your last wish, for I'm not that cruel."

The admiral clenched her fists tightly. She was thinking about letting them execute her now, to save herself from being in close proximity with this barefaced politician for longer, but she decided not to let her feelings to hold her actions.

"There's a storm coming, primarch. One that could potentially plunge the galaxy as we know it into bloodier, grislier and _quicker _version of the Krogan Rebellions. If you let my words slip through your ears like you officials always do, then I'm afraid you're dooming the turian race into another war, one that we can't possibly win. Now, if you care about anything other than yourself, then listen well. My time is short…"

…

_**New Larkintown – Uptown Commons – XCOM Shanxi Branch**_

_**1500 hours**_

_**Director Tyrone Faust**_

Faust grumbled as he entered the security combination to the doors to the situation room. He had tried entering the usual code, but the console wouldn't accept it. He even had one of his subordinates back at Schultz Base to give him the Shanxi Branch's specific combination, and _still _it wouldn't work.

"This facility hasn't had any activity in fifteen years, director." Shepard stated, who was right behind Faust. "Maybe the console just wouldn't work because it _doesn't_ work anymore."

"You've got something on your mind, colonel?" The director mumbled as he tried hacking the console.

"Allow me," The colonel gestured for Faust to stand aside, who shook his head in resignation and heeded the colonel's request.

"Brute force again, Shepard?"

The colonel nodded his helmeted head rigidly. "The solution to all problems that can't be dealt with cunning." He strode up to the door and with a mighty heave, pried it off from its Ilyushinite hinges. He entered the dust-covered situation room and casted the door aside.

Before Faust could enter, Shepard halted him with an open gauntleted palm. The director arched his cybernetic eye's brow, to which Shepard explained,

"I wouldn't want you getting in here without something to protect your head, sir. I detect some varying levels of thin man poison surrounding the area, most likely from unattended gas grenades."

Faust smirked as he shook his head, declining a facemask a nearby agent offered to him. "Remember my accident? They had to replace my lungs too. I'm pretty sure I'm quite safe around thin man poison, colonel."

Shepard acquiesced, tilting his head to the side. "Touché. Head on in, director."

…

_**New Larkintown – XCOM Shanxi Branch – Situation Room**_

_**1500 hours**_

_**Colonel Jonathan Shepard**_

The colonel watched his agents pull up seats, dusting them off before sitting on them. Still outfitted in his suit of powered armor, Shepard couldn't very well seat himself, so he opted to just lean on a dusty piece of machinery mounted to the wall.

Shepard observed one of his agents, Junior Operator Trask, worked to get the giant vidscreen at the front of the situation room working again. The director was meaning to contact the Council of Systems spokesman, who surely had words for everyone in XCOM. Several minutes and numerous strings of curses later, the vidscreen still remained inactive. Shepard and the rest of the agents he took with him had resorted to idle conversation to pass the time.

"So, what now?" Corporal Shaun asked his comrades. "We've beaten back the x-rays and we've secured the colony. What happens to us next?"

"I think the Federation's going to try and lash out, take the fight to ET." Operator Dobrynin suggested. "They'll probably switch roles with the aliens and do the invading from now on, and we'll be probably assigned to assist in any way we can, breaking sieges and infiltrating high-security fortifications. That sort of stuff."

Lance Corporal Gregson folded his arms as he put his feet up another chair. "Nah, I don't think so. I think the Feds are just gonna turtle this one out, posting fucktons of ships and soldiers around all the colonies outside the Sol System, just like how we did things back in 21st century. What we'll probably get to do is that we'll be assigned as scouts; going further outside Federation-owned space to see what the aliens are up to, and how are we gonna counter that."

Shepard rested a hand on the pommel of his sword, putting the other on his helmet's chin. "I'd rather we be prepared for whatever the director needs of us. Although our jobs _would_ get much easier if the XCOM project fully reactivates. Last I've heard, the director caught word of the incoming alien invasion through an emergency broadcast, and it took several hours before he fully mobilized the troops for attack. If everyone weren't slacking off, we would've already sent more forces down here at a much earlier time, saving some lives in the process. Hell, the alien ground invasion might've never happened, even."

The agents all nodded in acknowledgement. "Yeah, but it's been like a hundred and forty years since second goddamn contact. You couldn't blame everyone for taking it easy." Agent Lewis noted casually. "Nobody saw this coming. If someone did, it would be us. What we need is to man up, gents. We've got big bloody shoes to fill."

"Well said." Shepard praised the agent, although sarcastically. "Why don't you tell that to the director himself? I'm sure he'd appreciate such suggestions."

The agent shrugged his shoulders as he relaxed into his seat. "Meh, I think he already knows what's wrong with XCOM. He's probably takin' strides to erase those wrongs. Soon, we'll be killin' aliens just like good ol' Ferdinand back in the day. If only they'd make implants that allow you to use the Gift, even if you're not Gifted…"

"I don't think that by simply having the Gift, it makes you superior to regular soldiers, Lewis." Shepard asserted. "You don't need the Gift to become better at what you do. Hard work, determination, courage and discipline; those are the things that make proper soldiers. If you have the luck to have them, psionics are just bonuses to what you can use in whatever it is you do."

"Hmph." Lewis scoffed lightly. "Still, it's pretty neat to have 'em." Suddenly, the agent realized something. An inappropriately large grin suddenly appeared on his face, behind his faceplate.

"That reminds me, scuttlebutt says that you and Karlotte are gonna tie the knot! Isn't that right, Shepard?" He teased the colonel, who promptly folded his arms into his armored chest and hung his head low. It was quite clear that he's bracing himself for something bad.

Lewis, who was noted for having quick, analytic eyes, immediately pressed his advantage. "Whoa, I thought you two were just seein' each other. I was _not_ expecting your relationship to be a lot err… well, deeper. Looks like scuttlebutt's right, for once."

The rest of the agents were now engrossed in the Shepard and Lewis' conversation, having halted theirs to listen to the two men a few minutes ago.

"A-ha! We've got Shepard by the balls!" Junior Agent Elyria Roux enthusiastically proclaimed, setting her seat down closer to Lewis' side. Shepard knew that Roux wouldn't stay uninformed for long. She was infamous for being a notorious gossip back at Schultz base, and even from her old unit in Terra Nova. Whatever happens that's considered significant to one's life, Roux would find out, one way or another. And if one is considered a friend to Roux, eventually, _they_would also know.

Senior Operator Cole Samson laughed heartily, reclining on his seat with a mirthful look on his face behind his helmet. "Ah, so the rumors were true, weren't they? Finally, after thirty-two years of loneliness and misery, the Gray Knight has finally let someone under his armor." Samson has been known to be a poet at heart, but sometimes he took all the wrong words and mashed them together in an appalling display of dreadful verses.

Lieutenant Laura Li seemed more wistful than excited at the news. "Just think of all the good things you could have, Shepard. You're having a Thierfelder as a wife." Through long periods of observation and the operations they shared together, Shepard learned that Nakamura took quite a liking for him, but he never reciprocated, having already been involved with Karlotte.

"Who knows, your kid might have psionics, Shepard." Senior Field Agent Johann Abrahamsson stated straightforwardly, never showing any sort of emotion as he meticulously filed his gauntlets' fingers into talons with a monomolecular-edged knife. "Every kid born in the Thierfelder family since 2021 were all positives for Gifted status. Raising your own psionic child might become a handful." Abrahamsson himself would know, Shepard thought. One of his daughters possessed the Gift.

Shepard shrugged his armored shoulders. "I wouldn't know anything about that, but it shouldn't be that hard. Karlotte says she's due soon, so I'll know exactly if you're right in a few months."

Suddenly, everybody fell silent. Shepard cursed himself for slipping his tongue. "Ehm, I was going to tell you, but-"

"You're… a father?" Lewis asked in a wistful tone, before adopting his usual boisterous way of speaking. "Now, that's just bloody great!" His voice then devolved into an undertone as he held his right gauntlet to his mouth in a whispering gesture. "Well, to you, Shepard. I wouldn't be caught dead with a kid of my own." He then started laughing. "What a great uncle I would be, teaching your kid how to kill aliens in a hundred different ways with an alloy cannon…"

Roux said nothing, for she was already tapping excitedly on her omni-tool, undoubtedly spreading the news to her colleagues either up in orbit of Shanxi, or back at Schultz Base. Shepard normally couldn't tolerate this sort of behavior, but since several others in XCOM already knew, he might as well let everybody know. He only hoped that Karlotte's brother, a commodore in the XCOM navy, would go easy on him.

Samson remained wordless, as he was deep in thought. He frequently broke out of his contemplation to raise a gloved finger as if he was about to say something fitting and lyrical, but he always hesitated before gradually putting his finger down once more. It seems that this time, he was at a loss for what to say, which is quite rare for him. Still, it's probably for the best, thought Shepard.

From the sound of her voice through her helmet, Li appears to have forced some enthusiasm into herself, and it pained Shepard to hear her like this. "Well, that's… great. By the way, is it a boy, or a girl?"

"It's a boy, Laura." Shepard answered, regretting that he can't at least show his face to her. "And Johann's right. Karlotte's expecting a Gifted child."

Abrahamsson continued filing his gauntlets as he spoke, "Ah, of course. After he's born, I might bring Eleanor up to teach him how to properly control his Gift. That way, he'd be less of a loose cannon if he inherited his father's traits."

Lewis chuckled as he rubbed his armored hands together. "Oh boy, here we go. Here comes the talk."

"Honestly, I don't know why you always have to go in the frontlines and put yourself in front of every hostile's gun, like you're some sort of superman. I don't know what's wrong with all the influx of agents who picked a sword over a proper gun." Abrahamsson stopped what he was doing, his tone already several octaves higher than his normal voice. "This is going to be XCOM's downfall, where everybody resorted to tactics that hadn't been used in centuries while modern military tactics are cast aside to rot. Director Thierfelder might've saved the world back then, but I think he inadvertently doomed his future agents by introducing the Templar specialization. I mean, swords and shields… really? We've got plasma rifles and alloy cannons at our disposal! Come _on_, Shepard!"

Shepard waited a few seconds before turning his helmet's sound receptors back on. "Done yet, Johann?"

Suddenly, Abrahamsson remembered his place. "Yes, sir. Sorry, I just wanted to get that out of my chest."

Lewis chuckled at his colleague's expense. "If you think the Templar specialization should be thrown out a window, you need to remember how the ethereals used berserkers as shock troopers." He stated. "Thierfelder needed a way to counter those bastards, and because MEC troopers are kinda expensive and tough to make back then, he made Templars."

"Yeah, and it turns out that they worked real well at other tasks that don't include anti-berserker work." Roux supplied, just after covertly filming Abrahamsson's outburst with her omni-tool. "Who would've known that giving Meld-augmented agents a Tyrant, a Roshan and a suit of superheavy armor could make such effective shock troopers?"

"And that explains the existence of soldiers like me." Shepard finished. "If Thierfelder thought that we'd be a hindrance, he would've scrapped the project a century ago."

Abrahamsson sighed. "Yeah, I guess you people made your point. I still don't think it's a good idea, though."

"If it helps ease your mind a bit, some of us forgo the swords for assault rifles." Shepard added. "The shield stays, though. It helps with keeping the gun downrange, as well as the usual anti-projectile work it does."

"Gah, finally!" Trask shouted over at his corner. The agents turned their heads towards the operator, and found that he had finally managed to get the vidscreen working. It was already in the process of contacting the Council of Systems. "I can't believe how I'm the only one in this goddamn base with experience with fucking vidscreens!" He exclaimed, hands raised in the air. "Fixing this piece of shit only took me two hours!"

"Good job, Andy." Shepard shouted over to the operator. "Now, get down from there. That's the director's spot."

Seeing the vidscreen working again, Faust made his way up to it. "Thank you, colonel." He said as he passed Shepard and his agents.

"Thank Operator Andy. I had nothing to do with it." Shepard responded.

…

_**Situation Room**_

_**1600 hours**_

_**Director Faust**_

**| Identifying… please wait. |**

**| Identified. XCOM Director FAUST, TYRONE. |**

**| The Council of Systems is processing your request. Please stand by. |**

**| Spokeswoman TIMMERMANS, SILKE will be greeting you shortly. |**

Faust idly brushed off a piece of dust from his coat. A few seconds passed, and the vidscreen changed to view a silver-haired woman dressed in what seemed to be a crimson-hued, lavishly decorated dress. Behind her shoulder appeared to be the interiors of a fancy, luxurious restaurant, complete with customers lounging about, eating and conversing with each other.

"Looks like this might be a bad time." Faust remarked. "What, still in that honeymoon of yours, Silke?"

The spokeswoman groaned harshly. "_Yes_, commander. The third extraterrestrial attack on the human race, for reasons God only knows, coincided with my wedding, which ended a few hours ago. Truly, it's a pity that I'm the only person that spoke for the Council." She leaned further into the vidscreen. "I think your headquarters needs a good cleaning. It looks like it's been inactive for fifteen years, you know."

"I like the new look, actually." The director quipped. "Anyways, my forces assisted the Federation fleet that was sent to repel to Shanxi invasion. I take it that you've heard how it went?"

Silke downed a glass of green liquid from a stemmed glass she was holding in one hand. "Ah, yes. Good show, I must say. Your Director Thierfelder must be very proud, wherever he is right now."

"Indeed. Now, I'm asking you for directions. What would the Council have XCOM do now?"

The spokeswoman put a finger up and fished out a comm bead from her dress. Once she found it, she promptly inserted it on her ear. "Sir, it's Silke. Director Faust wants your input on the extraterrestrial affair. Hmm, hmm. Uh-huh… yes… of course, sir. I'll let him know right away." She took out the device from her ear and went back to the director.

"Through its contacts inside the Federation, the Council believes that the Feds are going to try retaliating against the aliens, commander. They want the aliens to see the extent of their mistakes at Shanxi. On the other hand, the Council wants your little band of agents to assist with the war effort, all the while maintaining secrecy of your existence."

Faust nodded. "Easy enough. Just like the 21st century."

"Not so fast," Silke shook a finger. "Firstly, the Council wants you to determine where exactly did the aliens came from; where are their most important colonies, shipyards and holdouts, that sort of business. You could accomplish this by either letting Dr. Garamond's motley band of college students to analyze the databanks inside the alien ships you've recovered, or you could send scouts to scour the void beyond human-owned space for the aliens. My recommendation for assisting the Federation? You should reactivate the Outsider project so you would have extra rifles pointed at the enemy. By now, you should have the MECT Project, and the GA Project reactivated, is that right?" Silke continued when Faust nodded in affirmative. "Good. As for the scouting business, all those Lotuses you have tucked away in your little underground fort at the Moon should come in handy for this sort of thing."

The director put a mechanical hand to his chin. "Lotuses are great and all, but I don't think unmanned drones can do the job better than human beings do. Plus, the Lotus design had always been prone to going haywire without human input for long periods of time."

"If you don't trust machines to give you accurate information, then you should have plenty of Voidlance pilots itching for some action." Silke suggested. "Just be careful when deploying them. Remember the British during Hitler's siege on their island? Skilled pilots can be hard to replace."

"I'll keep that in mind. Anything else important I need to know?"

The spokeswoman pondered for a moment before responding, "Also, since mass relays could be used by aliens as a way to get to our colonies much quicker, as of now, the Federation is posting a total of twenty frigates, thirty cruisers, two carriers and if the colony's important or populous enough, a single dreadnought, in orbit of each of the colonies outside the Sol System. Right now, Fed scientists are trying to find a way to disable or dismantle the relays somehow. They're doing it with utmost care, though. Some recent research on the relays show that if you mess with one of them bad enough, it could catastrophically explode, utterly destroying the system it was in, so you can expect progress to be a tad bit slower than expected."

"Also, Federation military officials contacted us recently, saying that they were paying handsomely for an intact, corpse-free alien ship – preferably anything bigger than a cruiser." She added. "I assume your forces have already retrieved those alien ships that were rendered crewless after Admiral Hackbar's drone attack?"

Faust huffed in irritation. "Yeah, we've got almost all of them, but three of the ships, two cruisers and a frigate, went missing just an hour after our forces repelled the aliens. Somebody got to them before us."

"Curious," Silke chirped. "But insignificant. We could probably chalk that up to civilian opportunists looking for a hasty salvage for credits or whatnot." She took a quick glance at the time on her omni-tool. "I'm supposed to be doing some… personal affairs, but I ended up discussing mindless military matters with a one-eyed, one-armed, washed up old veteran. Now, Tyrone, if you'll excuse me, my husband is getting impatient."

The director laughed. "Go and have fun, then. But for God's sake, I hope you're right. There's a group of lunatics out there who'd kill to get their hands on alien tech."

_**...**_

_**The Primarch's Office - Palaven**_

_**July 05**__**th**__**, 2157 – 1800 hours**_

_**Admiral Aureliana Nandrakan**_

"-and what's worse, their weapons are practically unsalvageable. Whenever you find yourself lucky enough to kill one of their foot soldiers, their weapons self-destruct in your hands if you try using it yourself, and if you just left the damn things unattended for more than five minutes, they explode into pieces anyway." Admiral Lina recounted Lieutenant Victus' story to her to the best of her ability. "We could still take the plating off of their armor, though. Before we retreated, my fleet took several samples of these strange alien alloys from the destroyed alien ships and some of the dead enemy combatants my troops on the ground dispatched. We've also retrieved some bodies for our scientists to look at."

Primarch Valerius nodded stiffly. He had been planning to cut Lina's story short once he heard enough absurdities, but her story seemed to contain undeniable nuggets of truth in them, which made the primarch listen to her story for much more than what he had planned. Looking at his chrono, he learned that he'd already spent at least two hours listening to the admiral. "Yes, I've seen the bodies from an e-mail Dr. Jaralan sent me some hours ago. I wasn't sure if it was authentic at first, because they looked like recolored asari."

"Yes, that baffled me when I first saw it, too." Lina added. "Speaking of the asari… this is the first time the Hierarchy's forces have ever been kept from an objective. Should the other Council races know of this?"

Valerius sank on his chair, pondering over his options. If word gets out that the supposedly invincible Turian Navy managed to find itself preposterously vanquished by a newcomer alien fleet, the humiliation and degradation the entire turian race would be subjected to would be too much for most to bear. Despite what he just heard from Lina, Valerius is still confident that his race would prove triumphant in the end. It was several seconds before he came up with, "…No. At least, not yet." The primarch ran a hand over his head crest and exhaled. "You've given me an account that strangely lacked most of the incongruities and falsehoods I have come to expect. In fact, your story seemed to fit together quite perfectly with the evidence you and your men supplied."

Valerius saw the subtle hopeful expression that presented itself on Lina's face. It saddened him to crush it. "However, your soldiers' descriptions about alien 'mind-powers' seemed to be mere fabrications of their minds, brought on by the hellish conditions of the battlefield they were in, as you described it. Also, these apparent gene-augmentation technologies these new arrivals possessed were completely false; Dr. Jaralan noted that their genetic structures were vastly different compared to ours, but he knew well enough to determine that there were no bio-augmentations made on the bodies, inside or out."

"Hmph," The admiral scoffed. "Primarch, I thought of the same thing when Lieutenant Victus described his experiences to me, but he's extremely adamant that what his men, himself included, experienced. This couldn't be a mere coincidence if several hundred of my soldiers felt the same agonizing thing crossing their minds at the exact same time. And the bodies we've brought with us were from the lower-ranking foot soldiers we've managed to hastily haul to the evac shuttles. The ones that Battlegroup Kayagkar dissected were lost when they were forced to pull back. If you don't believe me, then I'm sure you'll get to see for yourself in the near future very soon."

Primarch Valerius sat frozen on his desk, one hand supporting his head, and the other tapping on the metal desk in a rhythmic pattern. He seemed deep in thought, which is surprising, Lina thought. Even if she'd die this day or the day after, there _might_ just be hope for the turian race as of now.

Finally, after several minutes of contemplation in eerie silence, Valerius made a decision. "I'd like to exonerate you, Aureliana." He said, his tone sincere. "You must believe me, I really do. What happened on Relay 314 is a mistake; the Hierarchy should never have made the decision to open fire on these new arrivals, and you and your fleet paid the price for it. The most logical thing I could do is to absolve you of all supposed "crimes" you've done, but the other primarchs would surely prevent me from doing so. You see, after your testimony, I'm most likely the only primarch that does not want you immediately seen to death, but if I make the action of absolving you, then I'm afraid the other primarchs, not to mention most of the turian race, will most probably violently protest against me." The primarch sighed. "Looks like you'll be facing the firing squad tomorrow afternoon, admiral. I'm sorry."

Lina appeared indifferent to her impending death. "As long as you take my report seriously and make preparations accordingly, I can leave this world in peace. I will not resist."

"I admire your courage, admiral." The primarch replied, commendably. "You'll get what you desired. Our fleet might've been beaten back, but the aliens haven't heard the last of us. Tomorrow, after I give my orders to the fleet for a proper counter-attack, I'll see to it that all of our defenses are primed and prepared for combat. Soon, all of turian-owned space will be bristling with weaponry, and you can be assured that we won't be beaten. We might have lost a battle, but the turians always win the war."

"For the Spirits' sake, I hope you're right." Lina said, somewhat doubtfully. "Take care of our people, Valerius."

…

_**Sea of Tranquillity – The Moon – XCOM Main**_

_**July 06**__**th**__**, 2157 – 0300 hours**_

_**Dr. Arthur Garamond, XCOM chief scientific researcher, xenotechnological expert**_

With his usual stiffly irremovable frown plastered on his face, Dr. Garamond irritably entered the combination for the doors to Director Faust's office, mentally cursing the man himself for having these security measures in the first place. To say that the doctor was a bitter man would be an understatement. He was a crippled, terminally ill person, but due to bizarre biological quirks firmly imbedded in his genetic structure, he couldn't apply cybernetics or gene mods to himself to alleviate his problems, as his body would only violently reject them.

As Garamond waited for the console to recognize his code, he heard familiar clanking sounds fast approaching from behind. He inwardly cursed the director again for making him stay in close proximity to the idiot about to close in on him.

"Here to visit the director too?" Dr. Maksim Shevchenko, a man who replaced most of his body with an eight-legged mechanical frame that gave him a distinctive spider-like appearance, trilled in, rolling his R's. To his consternation, Dr. Garamond was forced to spend most of his time with Shevchenko, as he was the head researcher, and Shevchenko is the chief engineer.

"Well, what does it look like to you, tin man?" Garamond venomously spat out.

To further Garamond's hate against Shevchenko, the mostly mechanical man seemed completely immune to the head researcher's hostile attitude, and always appeared to be perpetually happy. "It looks like you are about to give your findings to the director, doctor. Just like me." He chirped, as usual for him.

"Nice observation." The head researcher sarcastically remarked.

The console to the reinforced doors finally chimed affirmative. The doors folded open, revealing Director Faust, in the process of recalibrating his cybernetic eye with his omni-tool, and his bare hands.

"Gentlemen?" Faust greeted, before a squirt of dark orange fluid shot from his mechanical eye, splattering a nearby bookcase. He seemed to not care. "You've got something for me?"

The two doctors strode their way to the director's desk. Garamond took longer than his engineering counterpart, as he relied on a cane to move around, while Shevchenko made use of mechanical arachnid legs. Before Shevchenko could even speak, Garamond cut him off abruptly, upon reaching the director.

"My team has completed analysis of the alien databases inside the wrecks you provided us. I must remind you that the data is incomplete; most of them were too damaged." The doctor straightforwardly reported to Faust. "Basing our work on the information we retrieved from our recent strings of interrogations, we've managed to create a sophisticated translation program for the language the aliens used, which appeared to be called "Vextrenese". Moreover, from several different sources, we've determined that the aliens themselves are called "turians"."

Faust momentarily stopped what he was doing, setting his omni-tool down. "That it, doctor?"

Garamond shook his head. "No, sir. On your orders, we began searching for important bases and military installations our agents could infiltrate. These are the places." The doctor fished for a datapad on his labcoat, handing it over to Faust when he found it.

Faust took in the information on the datapad. It seemed that the aliens were more numerous than he had previously envisioned, and more widespread, too. The closest concentration of aliens to human-owned space seemed to be in the Triton Cluster, in the Olympus System, in an agrarian planet called Drekplaats. It appeared that the turians possessed a series of military bases somewhere in the planet's surface. What the bases' functions are remained unknown.

Along with Morningstar in the neighboring Trotsky System, Drekplaats was planned for colonization in the early 2100's due to the ideal conditions for human life that it possessed. However, the Federation decided that its resources would rather be spent on consolidating its grip on other systems, and as a result, the Triton Cluster remained untouched by human hands. Not even a single scout probe passed it, as the cluster was deemed too unimportant to be of note compared to other star clusters elsewhere in Federation-owned space.

"Fine work, doctor." Shevchenko praised his scientific counterpart, who only grimaced in annoyance. Immediately after, he delivered his own report. "With the salvaged alien cruisers and the dreadnought wreck you have provided my team with, we have discovered that the aliens use superheavy ship-mounted versions of the obsolete Kingfisher-pattern railguns our MEC agents used to make do with back in the Great Ethereal War. Just an hour ago, we have been able to improve upon our own mass accelerator weapons technologies using the aliens' designs as a guide, though I am afraid that their mass-acceleration technologies are much more fleshed-out than our own. But that is not what is important. The engineering team had also envisioned upon our own versions of anti-projectile "kinetic barriers" for our ground forces and for some of our smaller vessels, basing our designs on what these turians possessed. Of course, our version is only a prototype; it could only work against the aliens' projectile-based weapons, and is completely useless against ship-based directed energy weapons common within all Federation militaries. With your permission, we could give our insights to Dr. Arthur's researchers, and then we could eventually make kinetic barriers available to all Federation forces, including ourselves."

"Consider your new project approved, then." Faust immediately replied. "Good work, you two. Is there anything else you could give me?"

"Yes," A sudden voice on the intercom began. It was Central Officer Deckardson, Faust's second-in-command. "Our Voidlance scouts beyond the Shanxi-Theta relay report that there's a build-up of turian activity in all of hostile space. It appears that they're preparing for a counter-attack on Shanxi today."

Just when Faust thought that this day couldn't be any more worse, what with the media constantly trying to find out who were the "other" ships assisting the Federation in Shanxi, another alien incursion is in the works. "Well… shit. Is the Federation Navy still in Shanxi?"

"Most of them, yes." Deckardson told her director. "The _Annihilation _and about five hundred Federation vessels are on guard near the colony, with seven of them being Fredrickson-class dreadnoughts. The other two hundred vessels have fallen back to their previous posts, presumably to regroup and rearm. The ships you've previously sent to the colony remained on standby, and the _Old One_ is currently hiding somewhere in the system's asteroid belt."

"How many of our forces are available for an attack, then?" Faust asked.

"About… fifty-three ships of varying classes are down at the hangar, inactive. Among those ships are three hunter-carriers and a dreadnought. In addition, three hundred units of Hellstrider-class mectopods are prepped for combat, and four thousand of our inactive agents are awaiting your orders, director." Deckardson answered, in her usual monotonous way of speaking.

The director took a minute as he pondered over what to do. He began with, "…Right, I want half of our reserve force ready for an invasion. If the aliens were as pathetic as Shanxi proved them to be, our forces should have little problems with what I'm about to order them to do."

...

* * *

_******HEILONG CLUSTER/SHANXI-THETA SYSTEM/SPACE**_

_**FNWS Nikola Tesla – The Mess Hall**_

_**July 06**__**th**__**, 2157 – 0800 hours**_

_**First Lieutenant Steven Hackett – recently promoted Raven Squad leader, acting leader for the Corvus Corax platoon**_

"Hey lieutenant, what do you think about the new guys?" Staff Sergeant Steiner asked, gesturing to the three soldiers decked in full suits of exoframes over at the table on the far side of the mess hall. They looked like they were planning something instead of enjoying their lunch, as illustrated by the miniature holo-display of the Shanxi-Theta System at the center of their table.

Hackett grunted and put a hand over his stubbled chin as his response. He wasn't sure what to feel about these "special-ops" boys he found himself working with. He knew too little about them to see them in any sort of light, but he did recognize that they were equipped with armaments that are several leagues superior to any military division in the Federation in almost every aspect. When they showed up out of nowhere when the _Nikola Tesla_ and the rest of the Federation vessels were engaged with the first alien fleet, they immediately turned the fight into a hasty victory for the Federation forces before promptly attaching themselves to the fleet, serving as "extra hands" like what Admirals Draynor and Drescher told everyone over fleetcom.

"I don't trust them," Hackett admitted. "But they're on our side. That's what matters."

"But seriously, you see the tech they're packing around? They make our guns look like the ones the protheans use." Private First Class Hendricks said as he glared at the soldiers. Suddenly, an idea formed in his head. "You guys remember that old conspiracy theory about black-ops personnel appearing out of nowhere in the 21st century and helping out with the whole alien-killing business?" He asked, in his most serious tone.

Hackett nodded. "Yeah, it's in the extranet, right? They're apparently called "XCOM" aren't they?"

Hendricks clicked his fingers. "That's it! I think these guys might be XCOM." He jokingly suggested.

Everyone in Hackett's table turned silent for several seconds before breaking into boisterous laughter at the absurdity of Hendricks' suggestion. But when they had their fill, suddenly they realized that Hendricks' proposal might not be that far from the truth. They sneaked glances at the soldiers, trying to find any sort of badges on their armor, but to no avail. Their exoframes have no visible markings that could betray their true affiliations besides some scratches and dents that indicated that they recently saw combat with the aliens.

"Maybe we should ask them." Steiner proposed. "They seem pretty decent for faceless elites. I heard from some of the other guys that one of them gave him mods for his plasma rifle and some spare Elerium charges to test the mods with."

"Problem is, _who_ should talk to them." Corporal Wernher said. "I call for the lieutenant. He's the people person in this table."

Pretty soon, all of Hackett's comrades are loudly calling for him to get off the table and talk to the newcomers himself, like some twisted version of the classical high school dare, but this time, instead of the lady he had taken a fancy to, it's a group of hulking soldiers in exoframes Hackett needed to introduce himself to.

Sighing in exasperation and raising his arms in surrender, Hackett slowly got up from his seat, picked up his food tray and made his way towards the newcomers, his squadmates cheering him on as he did.

…

_**FNWS Nikola Tesla – Mess Hall**_

_**0800 hours**_

_**Colonel Thierfelder**_

The psionic colonel chucked the last of her ration bars into her mouth. She had her faceplate partially folded into her suit, exposing the lower half of her face.

"So, yeah." Lewis concluded. "We're gonna be knee-deep in shit in a few hours again. The Fed grunts don't know about it yet, but the higher-ups are doing their best to spread the news." He devoured a large chunk of his omelette lunch before continuing, "By the way, how'd your little chat with the dino-bird go?" He said as he munched on his food.

Karlotte smirked. "He was extremely stiff at first, his mind's hard to penetrate, even. But it was easy cracking through his mental defenses when I implanted a few visions I cooked up just for him. Needless to say, I learned a lot about him and his race today."

"Did'ya kill him then?" Lewis asked.

Karlotte cheerfully shook her head. "No, he's still down at the interrogation room with the others. I think his name's "Vespasius", or "Vespasian", or something similar. From the memories he had in his head, he isn't like the cloned, mindless, disposable aliens our ancestors fought in the 21st century. He's got a mind of his own, you know?"

Shepard frowned. "Have you found any reasons as to why they attacked us? Are they part of the ethereals' forces?"

The psionic colonel shrugged her armored shoulders. "Well, I think they're attacking us because we broke some sort of rule, or something. From what I could tell, little Vespucci had never even heard of ethereals."

"Some sort of rule?" Shepard incredulously asked. "They're willing to make war because of some stupid rule that we have no clue abou—"

"Ehem." A voice from a Federation soldier standing near the XCOM agents' table cut Shepard off. He was wearing the attire of a moderately high-ranking officer, holding a tray full of food.

"Mind if I sit here?" He asked, gesturing to an empty seat next to Shepard. Karlotte couldn't help but admire the man's audacity; no other Federation soldier had the brass to approach the scary-looking soldiers in powered armor. However, closer inspection of the man proved that he's no ordinary soldier; plenty of fresh scars marred his face, the tip of his ring finger appeared to have been shot off and his eyes gave off a faint orange glow, evidence to the Meld-augmented eyes he possessed.

"Not at all." Shepard coolly responded, moving himself closer to Karlotte to give the man some extra space.

The man gave his thanks taking the seat he had his sights on. "I'm Hackett, by the way. You guys have names?"

Lewis had to physically move his dropped jaw back to its original position before snapping himself back to reality. "Yeah, the name's Henry."

"My name's Karlotte." The psionic colonel sunnily introduced herself as she fully folded her helmet into her suit. "I'm a psionic."

Hackett was taken by surprise, but he composed himself in short order. Psionics are quite hard to come by, and psionic individuals serving in a military force are a bit more rare. "I see. How about you?" He asked Shepard.

Shepard didn't bother removing his helmet or looking at Hackett as he focused on preparing for a big event in the future. "It's Shepard." He plainly said. "Is there any particular reason why you chose to sit with us?" He dully asked.

Karlotte sent a small amount of mindfray into Shepard's mind, causing him to flinch slightly. It was her way of letting him know that she doesn't like what he's doing. "Don't mind Jonathan. He always does this to people he just met." She said to Hackett.

Hackett doesn't seem to mind, however. "It's fine, really. I'm just here because I've got a few—"

"Attention all Federation Navy personnel!" Admiral Drescher's voice broadcasted over the fleetcom, forcing Hackett to drop his sentence. "This is Admiral Drescher speaking. Be advised, Admiral Draynor and I have just received word from Federation HICOM about our situation; the aliens are mobilizing for a counter-attack on Shanxi. I repeat: this system will be _writhing_ with activity a few hours from now. Men, stay with your units and prepare to receive further orders. I recommend you to do whatever it is you need doing before the coming storm. Drescher out."

Hackett, upon hearing Drescher's announcement, stuffed his questions away and began to wordlessly consume his lunch. _I guess this is to be expected. _He thought. _It would be one hell of a war if it only lasted a couple of hours. _The XCOM agents he had for company quietly understood and went back to what they're doing earlier. Lewis went over a file sent by Director Faust to his omni-tool before proclaiming,

"Well, well. Look at this." He enlarged the holo-display of the file, showing it to his two fellow agents. "The commander's trying to embed every last soldier he had with Fed units so we can work with them better – know how we can coordinate with them and "develop good working relationships", that sort of rubbish. This thing says that I'm assigned to Rhino squad, whatever that is."

Hackett downed a glass of apple juice before saying, "Rhino's over at that table." He pointed at a group of soldiers northwest of the mess hall, who were in the process of checking over their guns. "They specialize with close quarters combat and such. They saved my soldiers' asses a couple of times, but they're too reckless for my liking."

Lewis grunted in an appreciative way. "Looks like we'll get along just fine."

Karlotte chuckled at the disapproving look on Hackett's face before checking over her orders, and what squad she was assigned to. When she saw the file, she was relieved to know that the director at least knows about her relationship with Shepard, as he had assigned her and the colonel with the same squad. "Any idea where Raven squad is?"

…

_**Surface of D-class asteroid "B712937-196404"**_

_**July 06**__**th**__**, 2157 – 0830 hours**_

_**The Old One – callsigned: "Worldsmith" **_

"Such curious creatures, you are. My creators have seen their share of strange creatures; you are not the first." She said in a flat, colorless tone, as characteristic for her. Furthermore, the absurd level of volume on her external speakers made her efforts to sound friendly and approachable seem the exact opposite – threatening and ominous. "Could you tell me what made your race decide to attack my creators? They have done nothing wrong, and yet, you open fired on them."

"What did your kind had hoped to accomplish in making such an act?" With the translators she downloaded and implemented upon herself from Dr. Garamond's e-mail to her, she knew her "conversation partners" completely understood what she said.

The Old One, or "Carolyn", as she preferred her creators to call her, had been holding a turian frigate on one of her smaller tentacles, with the turian crew still inside, with a colossal, greenish-blue eye of hers trained directly at the them through the reinforced windows, observing and studying their every move.

However, instead of answering her like she wanted to, the aliens remained silent as they stared at the giant mechanical squid outside of their craft, the comical-looking expression of fear and shocked disbelief plastered on their faces, or at least, that's how Carolyn perceived them to be, given how unfamiliar their faces looked compared to her creators' own.

Carolyn gave a deep, synthesized sigh, something she mimicked from Dr. Garamond. "You know, there is nothing stopping me from crushing your little spacecraft right now, and by what has transpired in the past few days, I _should _crush your vessel right now." She slightly increased the pressure her tentacle is giving for emphasis, eliciting a metallic groan from the frigate and causing the aliens within it move around in panicked motions, trying in vain to make their ship slip out of Carolyn's mechanical grasp.

"But do not fear. You are my defenseless prisoners, and it is not fair to harm the likes of you." Carolyn said, just as she attached some of her fuel ports into the turian frigate, depositing some of her power, making the craft spaceworthy again. "Your friends are most likely going to make a return to this system. They should be just a relay away from here."

To the complete bafflement and confusion of the turian crew, Carolyn released the craft they were in, gently putting it down on B712937-196404's surface.

"You have no use for me, you are free to see yourself out of this system. Have a nice day." Carolyn said, giving the turian frigate a light tap to the hull to shake the turians out of their puzzled trance. When the aliens realized that their chances of escaping had gone much better than they were hoping for, it didn't take them a second to ignite their engines and speed their way away from Carolyn's asteroid, into the general direction of the Shanxi-Theta Relay.

"Very curious." The sentient vessel chirped to herself, moving a tentacle to the underside of her head portion to imitate some of the scientists charged with tending to her. She eventually stopped viewing her recording of the turian crew's frightened antics after seeing it about a quarter of a million times when a sudden voice was patched through to her internal communications receiver.

"Worldsmith," The voice, belonging to Colonel Shepard, the highest-ranking soldier in the Shanxi-Theta system, rasped. "There have been reports that the Shanxi-Theta relay is charging up for activity. The turians are coming. We need you ready for this."

Carolyn never got used to interacting with Shepard. He was always too professional and straight to the point for her liking, but at a time like this, her cooperation is invaluable. "I am prepared, colonel. Would you like me to move in to position?"

Shepard took a few seconds to respond, "You do that. How much charge have you got left in your cloak module?"

"About seventy-three percent, colonel. I have not gotten around to using it in the initial engagement, so I have plenty in reserve." Carolyn answered. "If you do not mind, I will proceed with my orders now."

…

_**FNWS Alexander Hamilton – Luciana-class hiveship**_

_**July 06**__**th**__**, 2157 – 0900 hours**_

_**General Williams – currently piloting a Juggernaut-pattern MEC suit**_

"Are you sure about this, general?" Shepard somewhat worriedly asked. "You're a general; you're supposed to be as far away from a firefight as possible, not in the thick of one."

As a response, Williams flexed his mechanical right arm, which ended in a rather nasty-looking, razor-sharp electrified claw. "I've been through more than enough of my share in live combat. These are dire times for my men, and I'd rather be with them than behind a desk, commanding soldiers I can't see." The general checked over his other weapon, which is basically an arm-mounted, oversized version of a Penumbra laser cannon. He had it disassembled and reassembled a few times earlier to see if it's working properly.

Shepard folded his armored arms across his chest. "I see, but you should remember that in the unlikely case that you find yourself dead, it'll be a great loss to your men's morale. I would prefer not to have to see soldiers fleeing from this fight, just because you went in over your head."

"Don't lecture me, sonny." Williams acidly stated. "I might be old, but I've still got my old MEC training under my belt. The only thing you need to worry about is yourself, Shepard. Sure I'll die, but that's decades from now."

"Everybody dies eventually." Shepard agreed. "Just keep it together today, old man. We aren't losing generals this day, and if I could help it, we won't have to for the rest of this war."

"Breaching pods one to nine will begin preparing for boarding actions in ten minutes. All participants, please report to your designated pods." An automated voice rang over the intercom.

Williams stood up from the crate he was sitting on. "That's my cue, Shepard. I'll see you over at one of them "turian" ships. Hopefully, I'll find you dead, instead of the other way around." The general half-joked.

"I'll have a family to take care of, general." The colonel countered, in a deadpan manner. "Don't count on it."

…

_**HWS Lamentations of the Vanquished, Post-FTL transit – in the Shanxi-Theta Relay's perimeter**_

_**July 06**__**th**__**, 2157 – 0900 hours**_

_**Admiral Galvocius Tresdin – admiral in charge of the turian invasion fleet – Jarrakus Mondranor Legion**_

"Looks like they're waiting for us." Admiral Galvocius said, peering over the _Lamentations_' windows. "And it looks like they're busy."

Clearly visible amongst the alien fleet is the wreckage of several hundred turian vessels. The aliens are not wasting any time trying to salvage anything of use within the destroyed ships, as indicated by numerous salvage shuttles zooming back and forth amongst the ruins and into the bigger alien vessels, undoubtedly full of anything they deemed useful enough to take. Curiously, some turian vessels were also being salvaged, but they appeared to be mostly undamaged. Inwardly, the turian admiral found himself repulsed at these new aliens. He expected them to behave somewhat like the krogan, maybe even a little bit like his own people basing solely on their military might and what little information that was retrieved from the survivors of the expeditionary fleet, but instead of retrieving their deceased from the shipwrecks and leaving the empty hulks themselves to float in space as a reminder of the battle that occurred like turians and krogan do, they're doing what the quarians are normally found doing. Surely if they're truly powerful enough to deal with Admiral Nandrakan's fleet, they should have no use for rummaging through the honored dead.

Earlier, Galvocius was skeptical of the true power of the alien fleet at first, but now that he had visual evidence of their might, his confidence faltered in short order. He was not trained to fight a superior force, like all turian admirals put in charge of more than one dreadnought. The most powerful force he ever saw was an overfunded Terminus Systems criminal empire, which had enough credits to make themselves two ramshackle dreadnoughts to further their nefarious goals.

"Alright, set us in nice and close," He ordered, struggling to maintain the air of poise and confidence his crew once had, before they entered the relay. "They haven't seen us yet, so we should have the element of—"

Unfortunately for the turian fleet, the aliens weren't unaware of the turian counter-attack. They were simply waiting for Galvocius' vessels to move closer before letting fly with the full compliment of their strange and terrifying arsenal of directed energy weapons. Almost instantly some of the smaller turian ships were put out of commission when their eezo cores were ignited by direct hits from plasma cannons, their hulls and kinetic barriers powerless to resist energy weapons fire.

Galvocius struggled to maintain his footing as enemy projectiles perforated his own ship. Shields showed complete 100%, but the hull sustained significant damage, a testament to the superiority of the alien fleet. _If the aliens completely bypassed my ships' main source of protection from enemy fire, how could we turians compete with these aliens on equal footing?_ The admiral thought, before banishing those pessimistic thoughts from his mind. _With discipline and superior tactics and training, that's what._

With adrenaline coursing through his body, the admiral began issuing orders left and right, and he was rightly obeyed forthwith. "Comms, tell the damned fleet to break pattern and assume Stalwart Predator formation!"

"Already on it, admiral!" The comm officer called out from his stations.

"Navigator, take defensive maneuvers, don't let the bastards hit us! Divert all of our reserve power into the engines; we need to get closer to them before they get a chance to get a shot at our ship!"

"Right away, sir!" The lead navigator did a quick salute before running to attend to his orders.

The admiral patched his voice through the ship-wide comms. "Gunnery crew, man your battle stations, I want every man prepared for combat! Marines, if the reports about these aliens are right, they'll make every effort to disable and board this ship; I want you to be ready for that!"

"Aye, admiral!" Soldiers and crewmen from all over the _Lamentations' _all voiced out, eager to see just how _accurate_ Admiral Nandrakan's report is.

The second battle for Shanxi raged once more. Admiral Galvocius' fleet edged closer and closer to the alien colony, but the alien defenders never let up the fire. Soon enough, the aliens mobilized some of their ships and began to meet their aggressors head-on. Predictably, the aliens were aiming to board every enemy ship they could get their hands on.

Galvocius occupied himself by doing what admirals at these situations usually do: trying to maintain order and morale amongst his ship, while trying to relay his orders as quickly and efficiently as he could.

"Sir, I'm detecting something big moving around our fleet," The senior tech officer interrupted. "It's moving fast in some sort of pattern, stalking us. Its approximate distance from us is ten kilometers."

Galvocius' attention was immediately diverted to the tech officer. "What? How come you didn't detect it earlier? Our sensors could pick up ships from ten _thousand_ kilometers away!"

"I don't know, sir!" The tech officer answered, just as the distance from the unknown object closed in to six kilometers. "Whatever it is, it doesn't have any heat emissions; it must be a stealth ship of some kind."

The admiral had heard enough. He was about to give the order to flush out the stealth ship with blind fire, when the subject in hand had chosen to reveal itself.

…

_**In the ranks of the alien invasion fleet**_

_**July 06**__**th**__**, 2157 – 0930 hours**_

_**The Old One**_

Carolyn appeared out of cloak, to the surprise of the whole turian fleet. They were too shocked out of their minds to comprehend what just happened, giving the sentient seeker ship enough time to charge up her main gun. _Do I really look _that_ strange?_ She spoke to herself.

With precision that could only be made by a synthetic mind, Carolyn made a direct hit to the enemy command dreadnought's engines, thoroughly scorching it in plasma. With its main mode of navigation taken out, the dreadnought is dead in the water.

Immediately, the alien ships formed into firing positions optimal for a killing blow on their aggressor, but before they could so much as retaliate in full, Carolyn had already moved herself towards another nearby dreadnought, quickly enveloping it in her mechanical appendages. The sentient starship braced herself for a salvo of enemy fire, just as she positioned herself so that she would not be damaged severely, but the dreadnought she had taken hostage will.

She could practically hear the turian crew's screams as she used the vessel as a shield against its allies. Her tentacles were hit, but with the same material used to make the ethereal Temple Ship coating her, the damage meted out to Carolyn was minimal enough to be ignored.

"Colonel, I have completed my part of the plan." Carolyn patched through to Shepard, whose forces should already be collaborating with the Federation fleet. "You should do yours now. Worldsmith, out."

"Roger, Worldsmith. I see the target." Shepard immediately responded. Sometimes, even the Old One thought the colonel was secretly a machine. "Are you sure it's disabled? Is the main gun out of the action as well?"

"Stand by," Carolyn pointed one of her spare tentacles at the command dreadnought, one that was affixed with several dozen Canary plasma assault cannons. The guns fired simultaneously, like an infantry firing line. Since the entirety of the dreadnought is built around on the main gun, the projectiles were aimed directly at the center of the ship and the only visible portion of the main gun protruding from the tip of the vessel. Since these turians seemed to never bother with decent ship plating, the bright green energy projectiles had no trouble crippling the alien vessel further.

"It is done." The Old One monotonously droned. "I will be overwhelmed if I stay here any further. I must retreat." When she knew the vessel she was holding couldn't withstand any more hits from its fellow ships, she crippled its life support systems before flinging it away, back into the enemy fleet's ranks. Hopefully, it would destroy a few frigates as it hurtled across the void.

"I think you might've done too much damage," Shepard rasped. "Whenever you get the opportunity, tell Dr. Shevchenko to give you a couple of EMP cannons, Worldsmith. You'll need them in the future."

"I was made to kill," Carolyn casually replied. "Not to disable." With an electric crackle, the sentient starship disappeared from sight, fading into the void, nary but the trail of destruction she left behind as the only evidence that she appeared at all.

…

_**Armory – XWS Mednikov Vladislav Ilyushin – Luciana-class hiveship**_

_**July 06**__**th**__**, 2157 – 0930 hours**_

_**Colonels Shepard and Karlotte – on purge trooper duty, attached to Raven squad**_

"So, uh… I'm new to this "purge trooper" thing," Hackett began. "What're we supposed to do?"

Raven squad, composed of Lieutenant Hackett and his team, walked with Shepard and Karlotte through an XCOM hiveship's armory, even as the second battle for Shanxi raged outside the ship's utilitarian gray walls. The two colonels and the Federation soldiers have already been in contact with each other for enough time to get themselves adequately acquainted together, and yet, Karlotte still had a roving suspicion that the Federation soldiers she and her fellow colonel were attached to remained unaware of who they are, and who did they work for.

"We're supposed to be in charge of clearing any alien vessel we've managed to disable of any hostiles." The psionic colonel answered. "We'll be jumping out of an airlock in Iconoclast suits, which was designed specifically for purge trooper duty. The soar packs we'll be wearing like backpacks are our main form of navigation while in space. From your service records, you and your team had extensive experience with soar packs, am I right?"

"Yes, we've been involved in Operation Hammerhead and Jakarta." Hackett responded with a hint of pride in his tone, as if he was expecting Karlotte to know about the operations he partook in. "We had to use soar packs to get to an elevated EXALT outpost, but wait, why can't some of your normal soldiers do that? Haven't some of your guys done that already during the first engagement?" The lieutenant asked. "Why do you need soldiers specialized for ship-boarding actions? Can't you just send a few MEC troopers in and be done with it?"

"That's because unlike those soldiers two days ago, they're taking prisoners." Karlotte enthusiastically explained. "As purge troopers, it's in our name. To put it simply, we don't."

Suited in a lumbering, tube-lined, bulky exoframe, with a cumbersome-looking soar pack attached to the back, and with a few customized touches to accommodate his preferred method of combat, Shepard crossed the distance between the team and a man-sized canister mounted on the wall, which had similar devices lining up adjacent to it to the right. Pulling a lever with a gauntleted hand, the canister's doors opened. After the cloud of steam cleared, it revealed a suit of armor similar to what the colonel is equipped with.

"You'll be wearing that," Karlotte gestured at the suit inside the canister. Like Shepard, she was wearing the same suit, albeit significantly less geared for combat, and she had her faceplate slid up, exposing her face. "While we're out there in space. It's too bulky and unwieldy for planetside use, but since we're in space, it should be a lot easier to use."

"Yeah, but why does it have to be _that_ big?" Corporal Wernher asked. "Can't they just make… I don't know, lighter versions of the suit?"

"I'm not an engineer, but I do know that if any stray enemy ship-based weapon manages to hit you while you're out there in the void, then there isn't going to be anything left of you to bury. This armor is at least durable enough to withstand a few shots of a ship-mounted plasma cannon." Shepard said, his already raspy voice becoming more monstrous when filtered through his faceplate. "And since enemy projectiles tend to be quite plenty, you _will_ need the protection this armor provides."

"I'm not really trained to wear any sort of heavy combat suits, much less a heavy combat/vacuum exoframe hybrid." Staff Sergeant Steiner admitted. "I'm more of a recon and explosive specialist more than anything."

Shepard looked down on the sergeant, who was several inches shorter than him. She looked up at him fearfully, but she masked her anxiety quite well. "Are you augmented?" He plainly asked.

"We all are." Hackett pointed at his unnatural eyes as he answered for Steiner. "We've been getting all sorts of crap from the regulars because of it too."

The colonel nodded, ignoring the lieutenant's last statement. "Good. The Iconoclast isn't made to be worn by unaugmented personnel. Having augs is all you'll ever need to be proficient in wearing the armor."

"Really?" Private Hendricks doubtfully queried, arms across his chest. "So it feels like you're wearing ay other sort of armor?"

Karlotte snapped her metal fingers. "Exactly! Although, you do need to wear your regular armor under it, because the Iconoclast won't give you anything to stop the cold like your own armor does." She informed. "Also, you won't be making use of any of your usual weapons today. The Iconoclast comes equipped with its own built-in armaments… as you can clearly see." She pointed to the missile launcher attached to her shoulder. "Jon will demonstrate."

"Right," Shepard drawled. He displayed his right gauntlet. It had peculiar hilt-like devices to one side and underside it. "I had my armor tailored to suit me. The ones you'll be getting would most likely be unmodified." With a mechanical _clack, _from the device to the side of the gauntlet emerged a plasma cannon. Raven squad seemed only a little bit impressed, but that was before the device below the gauntlet revealed a vicious-looking chainsaw-like armament. The colonel revved it up menacingly, and in response, it roared a hideous growling sound, audibly thirsting for alien flesh.

Steiner gasped in surprise. Shepard smirked behind his faceplate. "The teeth are made from the same material as my sword, and are, as always, covered in an energy field. I use this thing whenever I need to tear open a bulkhead. It's called a hullsaw." He powered both of his instruments down before retracting them back into his gauntlet. "Now, about your own suits, there should be a handle that goes over your arms, into your hands. You just need to clench it to activate whatever weapon you have built on your suit. Hackett, you should put yours now to show your team how it works."

Hackett nodded and went over to the canister. He tried to lift the suit by itself, but it was too heavy, even with his armor and his augs to help him.

"Hey," the lieutenant called out. "I need a little help over here."

"There should be a knob over the collar," Karlotte helpfully informed. "It should activate the eezo power core inside the armor."

Hackett said his thanks before pressing said button. Instantly, the suit weighed significantly lighter, allowing the lieutenant to lock each individual piece of the Iconoclast over his armor. By the time he was done, he felt at least two feet taller, as every part of his body was sealed inside the exoframe.

Shepard looked over the lieutenant in his armor. Technically, all XCOM equipment couldn't be supplied to Federation soldiers, but that was in peacetime. "Looks good enough. Do you feel the handle?"

Hackett flexed a mechanical arm. "Yes, it's leathery. I think." He replied.

"Then you should hold the handle to release that arm's armament, like I told you. Pull it to activate it." Shepard advised.

The lieutenant did what he's told. His armor's hand whirred and purred as it folded and slid into its lethal form – a rotary heavy plasma cannon.

"Shut up and take my money…" Hendricks said, completely awestruck.

Hackett's mouth formed into an impressed grin when the weapon took shape. He held the activation handle, causing the cannon's rotary barrels to spin. "Wow. I wonder what's on the other hand." With that said, he held up his left gauntlet and pulled the handle.

Instead of something spectacular to behold, the gauntlet's metal hand simply balled itself into a fist before a corona of electrical energies enveloped it. "Well, it's better than nothing, I guess."

"Colonels Shepard and Thierfelder, please report to the nearest insertion airlock," Admiral Sandusky abruptly called over the intercom. "Bring Raven squad as well. You'll be in charge of them. Oh, and if they ask about us, tell them. The director's given the thumbs-up sixteen minutes ago. Sandusky out."

"And just in time too." Karlotte repowered the last of her armor's inactive systems. "Come on, Jon, Raven. Time for an Iconoclast crash course."

Shepard spared Karlotte a worried look behind his faceplate. "Are you sure you want to do this? The risks are higher on this assignment, as you might've noticed."

Karlotte huffed. "Gah, let's not talk about this right now. I promise, after this one, I'll tell the director. Then, he'd most likely take me out of active duty. Satisfied?"

"No," Shepard admitted, shaking his helmeted head. "But it would do. Just take it easy, alright?"

"Don't worry about me. I'm more than capable of defending myself. Let's move." The two colonels began to trudge forwards to their designated area.

"Wait, wait, wait," Hendricks frantically said, holding his arms up and halting the two colonels on their tracks. "What did your admiral say about us asking something about _them_?"

"Heh," Shepard paused to turn around, looking at all of Raven squad.

"I'm sure at least one person here knows about a certain conspiracy theory circulating around the Federation – the extranet most prominently. A certain conspiracy theory about a paramilitary organization suited to dealing with extraterrestrial threats: XCOM. Well, you're all inside an XCOM ship, and you're looking at XCOM agents. The conspiracies are true."

Hendricks, along with the rest of Raven squad, practically had their jaws on the floor. It was several seconds before the private regained his composure. "I knew it! It was goddamn true, and I knew it!" He enthusiastically proclaimed.

"Hey, take it easy." Karlotte mock chided, "Save some of that cheer when we get back from the fight – alive and well."

…

_**HWS Lamentations of the Vanquished**_

_**July 06**__**th**__**, 2157 – 0930 hours**_

_**Admiral Galvocius **_

"Sir," Corporal Avitus called, looking at Galvocius with clear enthusiastic eagerness written in his eyes, but his voice remained calm and stable, like a soldier addressing a commander. "I'm leaving this afternoon. My superiors have an assignment cooked up for the fleet I'm detailed to."

"That's great." Galvocius said, but he never left his place at his desk. "What are you being assigned as a job, then?" The admiral asked. "A crewman? A deckhand? Part of the security detail?"

"No, sir. They told me that I'm scheduled to replace one of the marines that couldn't make it. I'll be part of a squad that's supposed to be down at the planetary invasion part - Talon squad, I'm told."

The admiral finally stood up from his seat, to face Avitus. He had to look up, as the corporal is significantly taller and broader than him.

"And I'm guessing that this is your first live experience with hostile targets, not holographic dummies?"

"Yes, sir." Avitus replied, still maintaining his dour façade. "We're going to be facing an as-of-yet unknown alien species. They tried to activate a primary relay, and now, my superiors want them pacified. It shouldn't be that hard. They're primitives, most likely."

"Right you are." The admiral nodded. "Keep that mentality in mind, and you should be home faster than you know it."

Avitus gave a faint smile. "Yes… father."

Suddenly, Avitus' face contorted into a pained, lifeless look as his eyes inexplicably swelled up before bursting with blood. His once pristinely maintained armor was now covered in blood and his leggings and greaves are now caked with dust. The dog-tags that he once had always hung on his neck now looked torn off, and worst of all, there is a gaping, bloody hole on his chest, exposing his innards, which looked very badly burnt.

Galvocius reeled back, surprised at what had just transpired before his eyes. "Avitus! What's happening to—"

There are no words to describe the admiral's horror when his son's mouth opened to speak. His breath smelled of death and fire, and yet strangely, it felt colder than frost.

"Father, what happened to me?"

…

The turian admiral slowly opened his eyes. He is face down on the floor, still-burning fires are faintly visible on the edges of his vision, and the dim outlines of his crew could be seen scurrying around, their hoarse shouts too muffled to be heard clearly.

Suddenly, he felt hands grasping his shoulders, trying to pick him up. Galvocius angrily shoved them off. "I'm fine, dammit." He picked himself up and dusted off his uniform. "Status report."

"Sir, our engines have been blasted off, our main gun is too heavily damaged to function, fires are scattered all over the decks and crew casualties are more than 37%!" The crewman reported. Behind him is Galvocius' executive officer's burning corpse. "What do we do, sir?!"

"Contain these fires and tell the crew to initiate field repairs, officer. If they're able, tell the gunnery crew to get the main gun working. Are the comms still online?" The admiral asked. "I need to coordinate the fleet."

"Yes, sir! The comm relay remained relatively untouched by the enemy stealth craft." The crewman responded.

"Good enough. And get the escape pods ready." Galvocius added, to the crewman's surprise. "Our engines are blasted off, we're dead in the water. If one of the alien projectiles manages to hit us one more time, this damned fleet will be leaderless." With that said, the admiral immediately ran off to the communications console.

"Jarrakus Mondranor, this is Admiral Tresdin speaking!" He broadcasted over fleetcomm. "The enemy ships are trying for a flanking maneuver. I want every available frigate to cover the western flank; cruisers, form a line and keep the enemy vessels back. _Blessed of the Titans, _how badly are you damaged?"

There was no response but unnerving static from the _Blessed_. One of the cruisers responded, "The _Blessed_'s gone, sir! She was used as a shield by the enemy stealth craft. All hands on board are lost, for all we know!"

The admiral sighed. Things are not looking up for the turians. "Fine. _Dominatus_ are you still with us?"

"Aye, sir! We were lucky enough to remain undamaged." _Dominatus'_ captain responded. "What would you have us do?"

"As you could guess, my ship is dead in the water. I've no use for such a thing. In a few minutes, I'll have all of my surviving crew in escape pods. I want you to retrieve our pods, and once you do, I'm assuming command of your ship."

"Very good… sir." The captain replied, obviously disheartened at how he was being relieved of command. "We'll be ready once you're in the pods. Tyranulox out."

"Right. For now, have a fighter screen just in the vicinity of the _Lamentations_ to keep out any unwanted guests." The admiral ordered. "Let's hope they're enough."

_**...**_

_**Space, en-route to the HWS Lamentations of the Vanquished**_

_**July 06**__**th**__**, 2157 – 0940 hours**_

_**Colonel Shepard – in charge of Forlorn Hope breaching group**_

"Look alive! Enemy fighters inbound!" Steiner shouted, bringing the team's attention to the threat. Several wings of turian fighters are heading right for them in a spearhead pattern, but it is clear that they haven't detected the purge trooper team yet. "They're gonna crash into us!"

"Keep moving, don't stop for anything!" Shepard responded over the comms. "Use your soar packs' boosts, for all their worth!"

Just as Shepard stopped talking, the fighter screen finally reached the squad. The breaching team carefully tried to maneuver out of the enemy fighters' paths as they tried to make their way to the enemy dreadnought discretely. It was like trying to dodge giant rocks in an overcrowded asteroid field, but with the added danger of being shot down by armed spacecraft.

Of course, being unidentified flying objects in the vicinity of an enemy aircraft, it wasn't long before the turian fighters began to take defensive actions to defend their dreadnought. Shepard and his team fought back, but as could be expected from six soldiers trying to hold their ground against an entire fighter screen, results were ugly for the six soldiers. Hendricks couldn't live to make it back to safety, as he was singled out by the turians – his armor did little to help him as several hundred fighters all unloaded their fury upon him simultaneously. He was literally blown to bloody chunks when the mass accelerated rounds did their course on him.

"Jesus, Hendricks is down!" Wernher reported over the comms.

"Don't look back, dammit!" Shepard angrily barked, in between firing bursts of energy from his gauntlet-mounted plasma cannon. "I'll hold them off! Get to the ship!"

Raven squad did what they're told with relatively little resistance, but Shepard had to put some extra effort into making Karlotte obey him. Still, she followed his orders.

The fighters, recognizing Shepard's move, tried to ignore him and focus on Raven squad. Still, the colonel's experience and skill with an Iconoclast's soar pack kept him on even ground with the enemy fighters. They kept trying to keep him separated from his comrades somehow, but he solved every puzzle the turians threw at him, keeping himself between the enemy and his team.

From their actions, Shepard deduced that the enemy fighters weren't meant for offense, but purely for defensive operations to ensure the safety of their main ships. The enemy fighters seemed ill trained, too. They repeatedly kept making mistakes that no human pilot would do with frequent regularity, and ignored vital openings that could've put themselves one step ahead of Shepard. They seemed afraid of death, too. They knew that since plasma ignored shields, one successful shot from the colonel's plasma cannon meant death, so they never bothered with making any bold moves to dislodge the colonel – a fact that he utilized to his advantage.

He went less defense-oriented and went on the offensive to play himself as more powerful than he really is. Whenever the enemy fighters tried to get in close, he would activate his thrusters to meet the alien craft head on – as one bold enemy fighter squadron found out: they, apparently forgetting about their original targets to go for Shepard himself, split off of their formation to try and deal with the colonel. Shepard crashed into the first enemy fighter's cockpit, startling the alien pilot inside it. The colonel immediately pried off the canopy and exposed the alien to the void. The alien tried to put something over his face, but Shepard wouldn't let him. He grabbed hold of the alien's seatbelt, and ripped it off before throwing him out of his seat, into space. He quickly moved on to the other enemy fighters, activating the magnetic locks on his armored boots to secure his footing on the alien craft he was standing on, giving him an optimal firing position. To Shepard, the alien craft were perfectly lined up to be shot in quick succession, as their heavily defensive formation necessitated close grouping. He immediately capitalized on this to cull off some of the enemy's numbers. Bewildered alien pilots, confused at the sudden turn of events as their comrades exploded right next to them, broke formation to try and get a good firing solution at the humanoid form standing over one of their own.

Realizing that the situation is about to turn on him, Shepard deactivated the locks on his boots and sped away, right before the craft he was standing on was ribboned to pieces by friendly fire.

"Shepard, we're standing right on top of a bulkhead." Hackett's voice interrupted. The sounds of whirring machinery and plasma discharges were intermingled with his voice. "We're trying to hold them off of us, but they keep coming."

"Hold on, I'm almost there!" Shepard responded. "Can you open the bulkhead to get inside?"

"I'm trying to!" Hackett shouted, and the loud thudding sounds of an Iconoclast gauntlet striking a bulkhead was heard over the comms. "This'll take too long!"

Shepard cut comms. He's heard enough. When he finally reached his team, they were standing on the underside of the dreadnought with magnetic boots, already in the process of being swarmed. Some of the enemy fighters appeared to have managed to go around him to get to his men.

Drawing his gauntlet-mounted hullsaw, he immediately went to work on the dreadnought's bulkhead. Since the hullsaw's blades are too slow to register on the dreadnought's kinetic barriers, it had no trouble tearing through the vessel's thin armored plating. Soon a man-sized hole was made on the bulkhead. Small objects began to get sucked out of the ship before a transparent, white-hued kinetic airlock prevented further objects from being sucked out. Shepard peered through the hole he made and saw the ship's cargo hold.

"Alright! Everybody get inside the ship, on the double!" Shepard ordered, tapping Hackett's shoulder to get his attention. "Come on, you're gonna get left behind! Move, move!"

…

_**HWS Lamentations of the Vanquished**_

_**July 06**__**th**__**, 2157 – 0940 hours**_

_**Admiral Galvocius**_

"The fighters have failed to stop the enemy boarders, admiral! They're inside the ship, down here at the cargo hold! I repeat: they inside the—gah!" The soldier was cut off. A disturbing blistering sound could be heard after he was interrupted.

"Damn it all!" Galvocius slammed the comms console. "I want every marine on this ship to get their asses on the cargo hold this instant! Push the bastards OUT OF MY SHIP!"

"Sir," A tech officer sheepishly interrupted. "More of these boarders are coming at us in every direction. Our fighters are tasked to capacity!"

"Well, what the hell are you waiting for? Call the damned cruisers to get them out of our tail!" The admiral ordered.

…

_**Cargo Hold – HWS Lamentations of the Vanquished**_

_**July 06**__**th**__**, 2157 – 0940 hours**_

_**Staff Sergeant Katharine Steiner – second-in-command of Raven squad**_

"Hostiles behind that bulkhead, to the northeast!" Shepard called out to his team of five. "Steiner, go flush them out! Wernher, cover her flanks! Hackett, give them covering fire!"

"I'm on it, colonel!" Steiner replied, before she pulled the handle on her left gauntlet. Earlier, she had guessed that it was some sort of ranged weapon, as it had a tube connected to it all the way to a rectangular container attached to her back.

She was very satisfied at what her gauntlet, and most of her forearm, transformed into. It was an oversized Damnation-pattern flamethrower; complete with a lit pilot light that burns a bright greenish-orange. Judging from the color of the fire on the pilot light, the weapon must be using Hellfire as fuel. _Someone in XCOM _does_ know about my pyromania_! The soldier excitedly thought.

"Hellfire" is the Federation's official designation for the compound that's produced when one mixes jellied Elerium and a certain type of Meld, before exposing the results to Element Zero. Victims of Hellfire were not only burned severely, but they were also literally "removed from existence, molecule by molecule", as a Federation defense scientist said. More precisely, organic and synthetic matter would get broken down to their most basic element, leaving nothing but an easily removed blackened stain on the floor.

Lumbering over to the turians' position with Wernher watching her back, Steiner couldn't help herself but grin stupidly when she saw the results of her work. They futilely tried to claw off the Hellfire coating their bodies, screaming in agonized howls as they did. Before long, there would be nothing left of the aliens, leaving no evidence that they existed at all.

When one of the turians had the bright idea to come at Steiner from behind with a shotgun, she laughed off his futile attempts to leave a dent in her armor. Holding and pulling the handle on her right gauntlet, the sergeant rammed an ironclad fist onto the surprised turian's helmet. The results were simply overkill.

"Cargo hold, zero contacts!" Karlotte shouted, breaking the silence that followed. "Shepard, what do we do now?"

When the team regrouped, Shepard relayed his orders, "Right, we should clear a path straight to the command bridge. Remember: we're not here to take prisoners unless it's an enemy admiral or a similar high-ranking officer. Johann and Lewis' purge teams should arrive in a few minutes to assist; they'll be in charge of doing in the rest of the dreadnought. Any questions? Good, let's do this carefully, and nobody should die for the rest of the mission. Let's go."

…

_**Corridors – HWS Lamentations of the Vanquished**_

_**Lieutenant Hackett**_

Hackett, using an omni-tool to hack the alien network for information, led the way for his team around the enemy dreadnought's interiors.

"Right, we should just follow the path I'm marking on your HUDs." The lieutenant suggested as he walked, his clanking footfalls in eerie synchronization with his four other comrades. More strangely, the alien security detail seemed to have disappeared just a few minutes ago.

"What're these colors all about?" Wernher asked as he tried to patch a hole in his armor with a medikit.

"The red areas are heavily defended corridors. We should avoid them if we can." Hackett explained. "The green areas are supposedly hostile-free environments. The areas marked as yellow are hostile-free too, but they're like that because there's a dangerous industrial risk in those areas."

"Really? Like the one we're walking on right now?" Shepard asked.

Hackett glanced at his omni-tool, and then did a double take. "I'm afraid so. It wasn't like that before we entered it. How could that b—"

"Forget about it. What do we need to look out for?" The colonel asked once more.

"Well, this area, in the event of an enemy boarding action, could be bathed in—" It was then that the lieutenant realized that the aliens knew they were being hacked, and had intentionally lead his team to their current position. "Jesus Christ, we need to get out of here." He powered down his omni-tool and began to look for exits.

"Why, what's going on, LT?" Steiner nervously asked.

"They're gonna wash this area with enough dust-form Element Zero to choke us to death." Hackett calmly answered. "After that, they'll vent this place with the same amount of radiation the sun provides. They knew I've been hacking their network."

…

_**Engine Room – HWS Lamentations of the Vanquished**_

_**Tech Officer Lledes Novariah **_

"Admiral, the boarders are in position for us to spring the trap." Officer Lledes reported, before glancing back at the security console. "And it seems that they knew we're expecting them to be right where they are now. Should I dispose of them now?"

"Do it." Came the simple reply from Galvocius.

"Aye aye, admiral." Lledes replied. "Commencing eezo vent. Starting radiation warm-up sequence." The tech officer chuckled as the alien boarders broke into a frantic sprint when the Element Zero dust began to emerge from the air filtration system.

"I wonder how it feels like to be choked in eezo dust before being cooked inside your own armor…"

…

_**Corridors – HWS Lamentations of the Vanquished**_

_**Colonel Shepard**_

"To the right, to the right!" Hackett called out from behind. Shepard obeyed, and those behind followed.

As he ran, the colonel noted that the ship suffered extreme structural damage. Some walls were knocked down, some areas of the ship had telltale green-hued plasma burns and more than a few fires were burning. It was a miracle that it was still in operation.

"Contacts, alien infantry!" Wernher shouted, and from the tone of his voice, he sounded out of breath. Shepard looked at what the soldier was pointing at and found several squads of turians waiting for them, assault rifles in hand and adorned with armored environmental suits.

"The Iconoclast isn't made to filter out toxins, dammit! Keep moving!" Shepard shouted over the comms. The turians began to shift positions, to block the team's only exits. Fortunately, the humans weren't easily dissuaded.

The colonel charged right through an alien blockade, bashing aside or blasting open crates and other barricades meant to stop him in his tracks. One of the larger turians thought he could stop Shepard with a charge of his own. It was not his brightest moment, as he soon found out. Shepard only whipped out his hullsaw and ripped the alien in two from head to groin with one vertical slice, coating his armor in blue blood. This had the added effect of ruining the turians' morale, upon seeing their former comrade so easily vanquished like that.

"Colonel, we could get out of here through the left corridor!" Hackett informed. "Take the left!"

"I'm on it!" The colonel responded. He found that like Wernher, he was going out of breath, and his vision is starting to blur. He only hoped that Karlotte is coping better than he was.

When Shepard finally reached the end of the corridor, he was only mildly discouraged when he found that it was a dead end. He fired a blast of energy from his plasma cannon before doing in the rest of the wall with his hullsaw.

The team followed the colonel out of the passage he made. They each used a moment to catch their breaths, as the area appeared devoid of any dangers.

Steiner collapsed on one of the crates. In turn, it collapsed on her weight. She was too tired to care, though. "Ah, we made it." She chuckled. "I can't believe we made it." She then noticed that there was only four of the team's original five. "Where's Wernher?"

"Dead." Karlotte responded, her usual cheer being already replaced with the appropriate seriousness the situation called for. "I read his mind, he's got a heart condition, apparently. He was already dead when the turians showed up."

Suddenly, Hackett was back up on his feet, looking ready to run again. "We've just crossed the street. We're still in the yellow zone."

"No, we're fine." Shepard responded, already composed. "The Iconoclast could withstand radiation. We just need to worry about turian skirmishers now."

…

_**Command Bridge - HWS Lamentations of the Vanquished**_

_**July 06th, 2157 - 1000 hours**_

_**Admiral Galvocius**_

This is it. The alien boarders have broken through most of Galvocius' defenses, and are now in the process of decimating the last of the guards that Galvocius had posted outside the command bridge, with orders to defend their position to the death. The admiral already had armed the command staff with assault rifles to defend themselves with, but the chances of being victorious seemed remote, not only for the _Lamentation_'s crew, but for the whole turian fleet.

Outside the dreadnought, the two forces are in stalemate. The aliens had superior technology, but they relied on them too much, and their tactics and strategies were quite lacking. It appears that their forces were not experienced with protracted spaceborne engagements like the turian forces do, and with their fleet admiral's death, one of the main advantages the turian forces have would be taken away from them, leaving them free to be defeated once more.

There is only one way to resolve this situation without much loss to the turian fleet, Galvocius thought.

Suddenly, heavy footfalls and sporadic bouts of gunfire resounded outside the reinforced steel doors to the command bridge. This continued for several minutes before falling silent. Blue fluids began to leak from outside, streaming into the command bridge. Just as sudden as the turn of events started, an automated saw-like implement swiftly tore the doors open, before a giant metal hand pried them aside, revealing the alien boarders.

Standing over seven feet tall in their bulky envirosuits, the alien soldiers were absolutely _enormous_. Their faces were hidden beneath tubed, rebreathered, dour-faced helmets, with perfectly round, reddish-orange eye-sockets, making the soldiers appear as if they were perpetually glaring at their enemies.

Before the doors were even completely out of the way of the aliens' path, the floor to the only other exit in the command bridge gave away in a green explosion. Seconds later, more of the aliens came crawling out of the floor, their weapons ready to fire.

With the turian command staff completely surrounded with no where else to go, the aliens' metal hands suddenly morphed into a variety of different weapons. They each spared their comrades a cursory look before taking aim, into the turian crew.

Galvocius, before anything can break out between the two sides, decided to take action.

"Everyone, put your guns down." He ordered to his crew, to their confusion. Most did not immediately follow, so he elaborated. "We're surrendering."

The security staff, ingrained to follow whatever order that was issued to them by their commanding officers without question, obeyed immediately. The rest of the turian crew followed gradually.

As a response, the aliens seemed to hesitate. They looked at one another again, as if mentally asking each other on what to do. Several seconds later, one of them, the leader, by the looks of his armor, spoke up. Galvocius was expecting a wave of indecipherable alien ramblings, so he was genuinely surprised when the alien leader spoke in comprehensible and unaccented, yet odd-sounding Vextrenese.

"Put your hands behind your head and kneel down." He gruffly ordered, his grating voice enough to intimidate some of the crew to obey immediately. "The decision is not ours to make, so I'll take a moment to contact my superiors. Though I must warn you, we came here to kill every last one of your kind. Don't think your chances of surviving are high."

The crew looked at their superior. Galvocius nodded and did what he's told. His crew reluctantly did the same.

"Are you an admiral, a high-ranking officer?" The alien leader then asked, after a few seconds of talking through his comms.

"I'm an admiral, yes." Galvocius responded. He felt strange talking to an alien in his own language. They must've made their own translators, which is impressive, he thought. "The lowest ranking man in this bridge is a lieutenant. There he is." He gestured at one of the younger tech officers.

Suddenly, the alien leader whipped out his saw, activated it and separated the lieutenant's head from his shoulders, to the turians' shock and horror.

"What the hell are you doing?!" The admiral half-shouted, trying not to go overboard and inadvertently triggering the alien's blood rage. "This was his first tour!"

"My superior told me that we won't be taking captives ranked lieutenant and below." The alien leader emotionlessly informed. "I'm sorry, but like I've told you, it's not my decision to make. If it's any consolation, the rest of you are fine. You're all our prisoners now."

"Are you sure the director told you that, sir?" One of the aliens spoke up, still keeping his weapon trained at the captive turians. "I think we should just kill them now. They're probably planning to cross us anyway."

"Stand down, Johann." The alien leader ordered. "The director wants to speak with one of the alien officers without killing him. I don't like it, but orders are orders."

"Yes, sir." The other alien complied in reluctance, lowering his guns.

Galvocius, while finding the similarity between his species and these aliens quite comforting, decided to speak up to the leader. "Excuse me, I need a name from you."

"It's Shepard." He responded forthrightly.

"Indeed. _General_ Shepard, I take it?"

The aliens then took turns to laugh, with some of the turian crew joining in nervously. The alien leader himself was nonplussed. "I'm just a colonel, I'm afraid."

Galvocius nodded. "Right. Well, colonel, as you could've probably guessed, I'm in charge of this invasion fleet. As the man in charge of coordinating the shipmasters, with me gone, they'll be decimated by your race's forces. A whole lot of my men would be killed, but they won't die so easily. They'll take some of your own men down with them, and you can mark my words as I speak: they're at their best when backed to a corner. It'll be like fighting double the force you've encountered previously. Your victory will be a short-lived, pyrrhic one." The admiral stated, full of pride, but mindful of his words. "As a request, to avoid further casualties to both our forces, I'd like to order them to make a full retreat... if you'd allow me."

"No, out of the question." The earlier insubordinate alien immediately answered. "Your kind needs to pay for its crimes. We're already stretching our generosity thin with your-"

"You may." Colonel Shepard angrily cut off his subordinate. "We only wanted them out of here, _senior field agent_." He accentuated the soldier's rank menacingly, as if he was threatening to demote him. "The admiral's offering to stop further lives from being snuffed out. I'd say it's a good deal, even if most of them would live to fight another day."_  
_

Galvocius nodded and stood up from his kneeling position. "Thank you, colonel. I'm glad your race isn't as mindlessly violent as I've been told."

...

* * *

**TRITON CLUSTER/OLYMPUS SYSTEM/DREKPLAATS**

_**Gordian Station – Command Bridge - In orbit of Drekplaats**_

_**July 06**__**th**__**, 2157 – 1100 hours**_

_**Vice Admiral Eranias Hellutes – in charge of Fort Progeny's spaceborne defenders**_

"Twenty unidentified contacts are about to exit the Triton Relay, admiral." Tech officer Zimideus reported.

Admiral Eranias narrowed his eyes into slits. "How many times have you hailed them?"

"Seven, sir." The tech officer answered. "That's strange… their profile signatures don't match any of our ships…" He observed, right before realizing what's about to happen. "Sir! These ships aren't turian! They're—"

The unidentified contacts revealed themselves to be a small flotilla of alien ships, matching the design aesthetic of the ships that apparently defeated Admiral Nandrakan's first contact fleet.

"Shit, it's the 314s! How the hell did they find us?!" Zimideus disbelievingly asked, his talons typing across his console frantically.

Eranias wasn't there to answer him, though. The admiral is already over at the communications console, preparing to coordinate his forces for a hard-pressed skirmish if the alien ships are on orders to attack, or for a prodding volley in case that they were merely scouts, about to report the turians' presence in the Triton Cluster.

However, instead of turning tail and speeding away, the vastly outnumbered alien forces approached the Gordian, with seeming hostile intent. Eranias wasn't about to underestimate his foe, however. He flashed a predatory turian grin as he prepared and arranged his fleet into position as if he was facing a vastly numerous adversary, not a token force of 20 ships. The alien ships, by the combined might of Admiral Eranias' two hundred and fifty ships of varying types and specializations, would not stand any sort of chance at winning, Eranias thought.

When the enemy ships hovered close enough to the turian forces, Zimideus couldn't help but open his mouth in confusion before quickly closing it shut to report to his admiral. "Sir, these ships are _strange_. There's no frigates, cruisers, dreadnoughts or anything we know. There's just one massive, 3-kilometer long ship supported by nineteen other bulb-like ships. The big one doesn't even have a main battery, it's unarmed... and the little ones are unarmed too, but they have tube-like protrusions underneath them."

Eranias slowly nodded, as he comprehended what his tech officer said. "Then _what_ can they do?"

Zimideus made a turian frown before shaking his head. "I've got no idea, sir. However, I did a scan on the prime alien ship, and found that it's rife with organic signatures, about ten thousand, _at the very least_. Whatever that ship's supposed to be, it has _a lot _of enemy personnel inside it."

Eranias made a quick decision. If the prime alien ship had that many personnel manning it, it surely must be extremely important to the alien cause. Plus, the whole alien flotilla is unarmed, making it a crucial target for Eranias' fleet. The admiral commanded half of his fleet to proceed with the attack, painting the prime ship as a priority target. All in all, Eranias felt confident about his ordeal. He instructed his forces to provide no quarter; this is retribution for the lives lost because of Admiral Nandrakan's incompetence.

When the turian vanguard ships are close enough the lead alien ship did not unleash a barrage of projectiles in retaliation, as was expected. It did, however, unleash something akin to an angry legion of hornets. Alien fighters in their tens of thousands emerged from two giant airlocks on the sides of the alien ship, placed themselves into a spearhead-shaped formation before quickly zeroing in on the surprised turians.

_What?!_ Eranias was dumbfounded when he saw the events transpiring before his forces. _Who the hell uses _fighters_ as their main form of attack? Spirits, this is going to be way too easy. And to think that Nandrakan's fleet had _lost _to this army of primitives! _

"Launch counter-fighters!" The admiral ordered in retaliation to the aliens' actions. "Today, the Hierarchy's honor will be redeemed!"

…

_**Dietrich Fighter Craft "Xenokiller" – in attack route with turian vessels**_

_**July 06**__**th**__**, 2157 – 1100 hours**_

_**Flight Lieutenant Kara MacPherson, callsigned "Zulu 42" – second-in-command of Zulu squadron**_

"Alpha Two-Three, this is Zulu Four-Two, radio check, over." Zulu 12 voiced through her comm. Zulu squadron has been tasked with spearheading the assault on the alien forces guarding Drekplaats from orbit.

"Zulu Four-Two, this is Alpha Two-Three. I'm reading you five-by-five, over." Alpha 23 responded, much to Zulu 42's relief. Bad communication can lead to disastrous consequences at this scenario.

"Alpha Two-Three, received, out." Zulu 42 pinged her squadron leader. "Zulu Six-One, do you read me? I've got a visual on your craft on my three o'clock, you want my group to form up on your six?"

It took a few seconds for Zulu 61 to respond with, "Solid copy, Four-Two. Negative on that, hold your positions. Keep your drones posted on each of your flanks. Try to maintain spacing, we're about to come in contact with x-rays."

"Wilco, Six-One." 42 replied, somewhat disappointed. "The rest of you, fall in on my tail. Keep your objectives in sight, and this'd be over quickly. With luck, we should get this done with acceptable losses."

A chorus of enthusiastic affirmatives from the human pilots and a sequence of beeps from the synthetic drone fighters rang throughout squadroncomm.

The XCOM fighter craft quickly closed the distance between themselves and the approaching alien vessels. For some reason, despite being outnumbered seven-to-one, the turian fighter screen did not fall back. They were like foolhardy prey jumping head-on into the jaws of a predator, 42 thought. The fighter pilot presumed that the reason for this bold action must be because the aliens have superior fighter craft technologies, or that they have better training.

When the two sides collided, however, 42 found herself glad to be grossly mistaken. The turian fighter screen was utterly demolished when the opposing forces met. The only technological advantage they appeared to possess is their superior maneuverability, but human vessels trumped every other conceivable aspect by several leagues. The first turian fighter wave was completely eradicated after firing a single, pitiful volley of mass-accelerated projectiles, their pilots probably in the state of shock just before their fiery deaths at the hands of human plasma cannons.

The second turian wave didn't fare much better. They were expecting their foes to be reloading their main armaments after the first clash, but it seemed that they possessed a secondary weapon, which was something completely unheard of. About a quarter of the turian fighter screen found itself completely immobilized after EMP blasts rendered their vessels dead in the water, their pilots doomed to be quickly finished off by proper weapons, or to die by suffocation and exposure when their craft's life support systems failed on them.

Mere forty seconds have passed, and the turian fighter screen was reduced to a shadow of its former self, with the humans only suffering relatively minor losses, as their synthetic comrades took the brunt of the turians' assault. The rest of the turian fleet didn't seem to notice this, 42 observed. They remained stationary, as if they were expecting their fighters to come out on top.

_Heh, how wrong these bastards are._

…

_**Gordian Station – In orbit of Drekplaats**_

_**Admiral Eranias**_

"Status report, group captain." Eranias pinged the leader of his fleet's fighter screen, but he won't respond. "Captain, what's happening out there? Are the 314 fighters neutralized yet?"

"Sir!" Zimideus shouted. "Look out the window, there's something you need to see!"

With an irritated groan, the general turned his head to Gordian Station's reinforced windows. He didn't have it in him to act shocked at his impeding doom. The alien fighters have outright destroyed his fighter screen, and now, alien bombers were zooming right for his position.

The admiral turned to his men. He was about to make a statement, but he didn't bother opening his mouth once he saw his fellow turians trying to fearfully scurry for cover in a bid to salvage their lives.

Eranias didn't feel the sting when his station was engulfed in a bright blue light. Everything in his vision flooded white for several seconds, before he found himself on the floor, still on the station and very much alive. The admiral stood up and found out that Gordian Station had just been disabled by an EMP blast.

…

_**Dietrich Fighter Craft "The Judgement of the Righteous" – diverting attack course to other turian vessels**_

_**July 06**__**th**__**, 2157 – 1100 hours**_

_**Group Captain Reginald Taggart, designated "Zulu 61" – in command of Zulu squadron**_

"Enemy command station is out of commission!" 61 proudly declared as his fighter craft sped away from the disabled space station. "All squadrons, now's our chance. Prioritize the rest of the turian fleet; they're disorganized and leaderless!"

61 fired a burst from his fighter's plasma cannons, obliterating a confused enemy fighter. Opening up a comm to Detachment Y:74's commander, 61 said, "Blue Crown, this is Zulu Six-One, we've disabled the enemy command station. I say again: enemy command station down, ready for purge trooper insertion. How copy, over?"

"Loud and clear, Six-One." A dry, grating voice responded. "Be advised, the order to prioritize using EMP cannons over your Canaries has been rescinded. Lethal force is much more preferred now. This is Blue Crown, over and out."

61 bared his teeth in a primal grin behind the tubed mask that covered his mouth. Looks like this battle's going to turn out a lot easier now.

With their command station effectively severed from them, the alien cruiser began to reposition to cover their now exposed flank. From the garbled communications streaming from their comms, they remained mostly calm and collected, even if they were completely shocked at how the battle turned out. Unfortunately for them, 61 is planning to change that.

"All fighters, target the alien command bridges. Remove their commanders from play." He ordered just after reducing an alien bomber into a derelict piece of scrap metal.

The result was horrifying, if the humans were put into the aliens' shoes. The human fighters dropped on their prey like a predatory bird swooping after defenceless mice. GARDIAN anti-fighter batteries fought back, but the sheer amount of human fighter craft made the laser batteries overheat, their auto-targeting systems tasked to capacity. Plus, the Ilyushinite alloy plating the fighters were outfitted in did wonders for the humans; often saving fighters and bombers that would've otherwise been lost. Within minutes, most of the alien ships were all missing the upper portions of their vessels, resulting in an even more disorganized alien fleet, their forces effectively rendered headless. Their comms are now filled with appropriate panicky reports, replacing the earlier professional tone of the reports.

Still, with the overwhelming amount of firepower the humans have brought, it wasn't enough to kill every last turian. At least half a dozen of them escaped, much to 61's consternation. With barely contained anger, he broadcasted,

"All podbearers, it should now be safer for you to begin the landborne invasion. Watch for enemy stragglers, there should still be a few."

…

_**Fort Progeny Military Research Installation – Sigma Block – Drekplaats**_

_**July 06**__**th**__**, 2157 – 1200 hours**_

_**Major General Varro Krodimus – Fort Progeny's highest ranking officer**_

General Varro, through his "outstanding propensity for commanding units to stand guard in one spot for indefinite amounts of time", as described by his superiors in the Hierarchy, was put in charge of the security forces guarding the turian military installation in Drekplaats. Most turians preferred to be put in charge of units that are most likely to see combat, but for some reason, Varro was always assigned to posts that are about as lively as a graveyard at night.

Sure, life in Fort Progeny could be the dullest one known to turiankind, but Varro compensates by being extremely proficient at what he was assigned to do. It was typical for places he was posted to guard to not have any significant events during the duration of his stay, with only the occasional troublemaker serving as the source of his post's problems.

As a result of this inactivity, Varro had taken to being quite sluggish, but unstoppable and unrelenting when called for, as typical for a turian general of high rank like him.

That was a few days ago. Now, Varro's mind is practically delirious with paranoia. News from Palaven about some extremely dangerous new alien race apparently sending the entirety of the Draius Ferlodinus Legion and some elements of other legions packing back to Palaven had affected the general severely. He hasn't eaten anything since the day before, and sleep seemed to be impossible for him to achieve.

Now, the 314s are knocking on his door. They had just made short work of Admiral Eranias' fleet, and are now most likely in the process of making a landborne invasion of Drekplaats. The general's worst nightmare is quite literally being made manifest.

With unabashed terror, Varro watched the feed through the cameras his men installed around Fort Progeny's perimeter. Giant metallic objects seemed to descend from the sky in fireballs, alongside with what's clearly wreckage from Admiral Eranias' ruined spaceborne defenders.

…

_**XPB Yangtze – currently inserting troops into Drekplaats. **_

_**July 06**__**th**__**, 2157 – 1100 hours**_

_**Master Operator Andrej Aleksandrov, callsigned "Leonidas" – Hellstrider pilot**_

"Hellstrider systems online. Designation: Poseidon. All systems nominal. Weapon systems: primed and ready. Mission: the liberation of Drekplaats, and the acquisition of functional alien technology."

Aleksandrov's hands were shaking on his Hellstrider's console. Not out of fear, because he wasn't the sort to tremble when faced with ant-sized opponents while inside a giant mectopod. He was trembling out of joy and excitement. He had trained all his life for this moment, and the moment appears to have come.

The floor underneath the mectopod hangar slid to the side, revealing the greenery that is Drekplaats below Aleksandrov's mech. Aleksandrov is supposed to be rapidly dropped from orbit for quick deployment, along with several others of his comrades for the extent of the invasion. With the element zero drive core sustaining the mech, the only damage it will sustain after being launched into the ground from orbit would be minimal, at worst.

"Launching mectopod one."

With a clang and a hiss, the Hellstrider in front of Aleksandrov's own was detached from the robotic claw holding it. It drifted away from its ship before it activated its leg thrusters, sending it aflame as it plummeted down into Drekplaat's surface.

"Launching drop pod one."

The gigantic pod containing at least a hundred agents was propelled violently into Drekplaat's surface. Unlike the regular disposable drop pods, the pods launched from podbearer ships are designed to function as command centers and armories.

"Launching mectopod two."

Aleksandrov strapped himself on his cockpit's seat. Seconds passed before he felt his mech's restraints being bolted off. Hastily flipping a couple of essential switches, initiating most of the Hellstrider's navigation systems and activating the element zero drive core powering his mech, Aleksandrov made his descent towards the battlefield.

As he fell, the Hellstrider buckled and wobbled. Red warning signs began to flash, and the heat inside the machine became intolerable. Thankfully, it was over in half a minute, when the Hellstrider made landfall. He landed in a grassy open plain, full of red poppy-like flowers and wooden protrusions on the ground. If it weren't for the fact that this area is currently a warzone, it would've been quite a peaceful, serene place.

Of course, with his immediate area being a battlefield, as soon as he composed his mech's bearings, his position was immediately set upon by enemy tank and small arms fire. Quickly priming his arm-mounted fusion lance and discharging it at the closest enemy tank, Aleksandrov smirked in triumph as he watched the vehicle go up in an orange explosion brought on by his hands. The mectopod pilot pressed the advantage to advance towards a nearby tank column, trampling over alien infantry as he charged. When he closed the distance, Aleksandrov willed his mech to tear a hovertank's turret off with its right arm's electrified claw, along with most of the tank's upper portion, exposing its interiors. The turian tank crew could not even react as they were wiped from existence by the plasma assault cannon mounted on Aleksandrov's shoulder. In desperation, the tanks began to sacrifice themselves so that some of their numbers and their infantry support could fall back to safer positions. However, the sheer firepower that XCOM's engineers put in each individual Hellstrider and the sophisticated auto-targeting programs installed in the mechs ensured a quick, unclean end to any who opposed the pilot, and the tank column Aleksandrov had in his sights is no exception.

As the mectopod pilot reaped death all over his position, allied drop pods and MEC troopers were dropping from the sky, making craters where they smashed into. Agents wrenched open the exits to their pods before clearing their area's proximity of any hostiles with military-like precision and prejudice. MEC troopers, not to be outdone, went unopposed as they plowed through the enemy defenders, often encountering enemy resistance too pathetic to be hindered in significance. In the sky, friendly aircraft kept the skies above the XCOM agents clear, shooting down their alien counterparts, allowing the human ground forces to advance unimpeded. In short, the turian defense forces are simply not suited to deal with anything the XCOM forces have in store.

As Aleksandrov did his best to clear his area of enemy forces, a crackle of static accompanied by his commander's voice forced him to slacken his pace. "All invading forces, this is Blue Crown. Your orders are to regroup in the area I'm marking on your HUDs. Don't hesitate to kill any hostile forces you encounter on the way there. Blue Crown out."

"Enemy armored column approaching from the northwest!" Another voice shouted over the comms. "Our flank's exposed! Anyone in a position to help?"

"Hang on, I'm rolling." Aleksandrov answered, ordering his mech to lurch forwards, into the alien tank column. He wondered why the aliens even considered fighting back. Without superior numbers on their side, they might as well be shooting paintballs into the XCOM forces invading them.

…

_**Open plains – 400km to Fort Progeny **_

_**July 06**__**th**__**, 2157 – 1230 hours**_

_**Brigadier General Sir Theodore "Ted" Larsen, Great Ethereal War veteran – in charge of the human vanguard force**_

The alien officer, oblivious to the self-destruct feature of XCOM's main close-quarters firearm – the alloy cannon, lunged at General Larsen, grappling with him for his gun. He could just let the alien blow himself up, but the colonel would rather not lose his precious gun, Barker, in the process.

With the strength that could only be gained by having gene augs, Larsen shoved the gun in his hands into the officer's helmet, flattening the side of it while knocking it off, exposing the alien's hideous face. Still, his grip on Barker is commendable. Most people would be already unconscious after experiencing a heavy-handed blow to the head from the general. In response, the alien kicked and landed punches of his own. Larsen continued struggling for his weapon, when another turian arrived to assist his commanding officer, peppering Larsen's armored back with his assault rifle.

_I must end this quickly._ Larsen thought. With a hefty tug, the colonel finally wrenched his shotgun away from the alien's claws before hitting him across the head with the stock, sending him staggering back, clutching his bleeding head in agony. Utilizing the moment, Larsen pressed a stud underneath the alloy cannon. An electrified bayonet emerged from it.

The general spun around and impaled the turian behind him on his chest. The alien gasped in pain as the energy field coating the bayonet scorched his innards away. Larsen, not satisfied yet, pulled the blade away from the alien's flesh before plunging it thrice more in rapid succession before finishing him off with a single discharge of machined Ilyushinite shards from Barker in point-blank range to the helmet. There was literally nothing left of the alien's head after the brigadier general pulled the trigger, and yet, he noticed that instead of blowing off the upper portion of his opponent's torso along with his head, only the head was torn off. Larsen guessed that something must have been lessening the impact of his shots.

The alien officer made good use of his soldier's sacrifice, however. Picking up a trio of grenades from a fallen XCOM agent, the turian unpinned and threw two of the explosives to Larsen, who was just in the process of reloading his shotgun.

Being suited in full Colossus armor, the general was only knocked off his feet when a plasma grenade detonated right under his feet, with only a few bruises and burns as testament to his negligence. He quickly righted himself and tried to reach for his gun, but it wasn't on his person anymore. He tried to search for it, but a thick cloud of white smoke blocked his view. Keeping calm, he slowly reached for his knife as he activated his helmet's built-in thermal optics.

Just as the world around Larsen turned into a wide range of colors, another grenade came rolling underneath him once more. Larsen prepared to move out of his position, but suddenly, a bright yellow-orange signature charged him from the front, nearly toppling him over when the alien slammed into him, despite him being much taller and broader than his opponent. Before he could retaliate, the grenade had already detonated.

The grenade turned out to be a flash grenade, fortunately. Unfortunately, since Larsen had his thermal optics on, the grenade's effect on his vision was amplified tremendously. He found himself on his knees, screaming in pain and clawing away at his helmet's eye sockets. The alien, having his back turned away from the explosion, was only deafened by the blast.

_Impressive,_ Larsen thought, even in his pained state. These aliens have a good grasp of tactics – better than mutons and sectoids, even.

The alien officer, exploiting his success, drew his combat knife and made his move to finish off the general. He quickly jammed the blade into the side of Larsen's faceplate before forcefully prying it off, revealing an old soldier's face. The alien let out a pleased growling sound when he finally found a spot where he could slide his knife into.

However, being in the business of war for more than a hundred years made Larsen virtually unkillable. His body might be weathered, but his mind housed a veritable ocean of experience. It was probably several decades ago when he learned to fight without the aid of his eyes, relying only on his other senses.

Just as the blade that would've ended his life began its approach, Larsen's head was already out of the way. The general quickly grabbed hold of the surprised alien's leg and _pulled_, sweeping him off his feet.

"Agh, you bastard!" The alien said; followed by a curse Larsen couldn't decipher with his brand-new Vextrenese translators. He righted himself relatively quickly when he realized that his adversary might not be as helpless as he thought.

Picking himself up, Larsen drew his own knife, putting on the old "Counter-berserker" stance. "Come, then. Show me what passes for fury among your misbegotten kind."

The alien nearly dropped his weapon when he heard words – _coherent_ words, come out of his enemy. "What? You could—"

The alien's reaction was just what Larsen was aiming for. His words died in his mouth when the general charged him. The alien barely managed to save himself by quickly locking his knife to Larsen's, preventing a blow that should've slashed his throat open. The general then immediately countered by sliding his blade away from the lock, causing the turian to sever one of his mandibles by accident with his own knife. Larsen then followed up his attacks by sheathing his knife into the reeling turian's torso before landing a swift gauntleted punch to the side of his head, concussing him.

As the electrified knife did its work on the concussed turian's flesh, Larsen tried to force him into a chokehold. The alien officer tried to squirm out of Larsen's grasp, but he was too strong. With his victim firmly immobilized in his armored arms, the general turned and forced him to see the devastation that is being wrought upon kind.

Berserker squads were having a bit too much fun tearing out their victims' innards into the grassy field. XCOM agents were advancing towards the enemy fort without much trouble, wiping out squads of turians in their way. Psi-troopers pressed forwards across the battlefield in menacing strides, sowing terror and destruction to their foes, while providing protection and encouragement to their allies. Aug troopers, specializing in fields of their own choosing, performed feats that go beyond what an ordinary human being could do, often to the bafflement and fear of the turians. MEC troopers did what they always did, providing heavy infantry support and limited artillery support with their shoulder-mounted artillery pieces. Last but not least, Hellstrider mechs, standing at over forty feet tall, lumbered forwards, indiscriminately eliminating the pitiful turian opposition pitted against them.

The turian whimpered in Larsen's grip in such a way that he almost pitied his vanquished foe. Almost.

The general twisted his grip. With an almost inaudible crunch, the turian went limp. Larsen discarded the corpse on his hands in a nonchalant way, inelegantly piling it on top of other alien corpses. He then realized that those corpses also included most of the task force he tried to personally lead to the alien fort.

He sighed, yet he shouldn't. _This is just a normal part of every single war. _He reasoned. _I thought I'm already used to this. _

Reaching for the radio attached to the collar of his armor, Larsen commed for another squad he took with him. They were fortunate to be much further up the turian lines, away from most of the fighting. "Omen team, this is Checkmate Actual. Most of my men are dead; so I think it's up to you now, so don't wait for the rest of us. Are you ready to proceed?"

"We're ready, sir." Omen Leader reported. "We're just outside the fort's perimeter. The guards are currently disorganized, now's the best time if you want us to move in."

"Very well. Make sure to keep in radio contact." Larsen responded. "We don't want them destroying whatever useful tech they're hiding in there. You've got translators, so if word gets around that the aliens are ordering a purge of any useful tech to prevent capture, I need you to ensure that the order doesn't get carried out. Checkmate out."

_**...**_

_**XWS Festus - Tranquil-class hunter-killer carrier**_

_**July 06th, 2157 - 1300 hours**_

_**Field Marshal Klaus Trakas, designation "Blue Crown"**_

"It's a killzone out there, sir." Captain Petrovich informed.

"Explain." Field Marshal Trakas plainly asked the captain.

"I've sent two squads to scout the area out, but they were cut down before the one-minute mark. The turians have fixed MG emplacements on the other side, they have tanks for heavy armor support, and what's worse, they've got the area locked down with constant artillery barrages. Anyone we send beyond our area is a dead man, I'm afraid."

Trakas knew that it was times like this that rushing heedlessly into the fight won't do, even with superior weapons technology. "Hm. Patch me the through to Checkmate, captain."

"Roger, sir. I'll get him for you." The captain stepped off the holoplatform.

Seconds later, the armored form of the brigadier general replaced the captain. Strange, Trakas thought. His eyes were bandaged over, with blood trailing out of the edges, staining the bandage's white with red. "These aliens are smarter than we thought, sir." Was his sole explanation.

"Never mind that, general. What's the situation down there?"

"It'll be over quickly, sir. The turians are heavily bunkered down their side of No Man's Land, but I've got a solution just for that." The general replied.

"And what's that, could you tell me?" Trakas asked, raising a brow.

"I'll tell you, sir, but I think you should just see the results for yourself. I've already got several infiltrators inside the alien installation, and I'm trying to coordinate the scouting teams I've sent out to investigate the enemy front lines" Larsen straightforwardly told his superior. "I promise you, the turians won't hold for long. Their fortress will be under XCOM's banners, and soon, their secrets will be ours to take. This planet _will_ be ours, sir."

...

_**20km to Fort Progeny, No Man's Land, human side - Drekplaats**_

_**July 06th, 2157 - 1400 hours**_

_**Private Arkady Czarniak - Albatross squad member**_

As the XCOM forces eventually bludgeoned their way close to the enemy fort, they had encountered extreme resistance from pre-made alien static defenses, including a trench that stretched the entirety of the only path towards the alien-held installation. On the turian side of things, it appears that they've bunkered up when they received word that their spaceborne defense has been knocked down. Machine-guns lined almost every inch of the enemy trench, anti-armor turrets and enemy hovertanks are almost as numerous as the infantry, and anti-air batteries kept the turian airspace clear of any XCOM craft. It seems that whatever the turians are trying to do inside their base, they want it to themselves very desperately.

_2:00 PM._ That's what Arkady's omni-tool told him. Him, and the rest of Albatross squad are huddling behind cover deep inside human territory after being taken out of active duty. Earlier, Albatross had been sent over the improvised trench the MEC troopers hastily dug out to protect the regular agents from marksman fire to accompany a strike force to scout the enemy trench across the other side of No Man's Land. The endeavor was a success but at an astounding 60% casualty rate. From the original seven of Albatross' ranks, only three ever returned back to the human frontline trench.

"It's been an hour, yeah?" Lance Corporal Findley asked from his piece of cover after taking gulping down a swig of water from his canteen. Since the original sergeant of Albatross had lost half of his neck after three consecutive marksman round tore through it, Findley has been the acting sergeant of Albatross until a proper replacement could be found.

"Yeah," Arkady replied, half-whispering. He was in charge of listening to the tell-tale shrieks of enemy artillery. "Do you think the general's ever gonna get us over the trench again?"

"I'm sure," Findley assured. "Larsen's probably just waiting for Omen to come back with news. After that, we'll be-"

"All personnel, this is Captain Petrovich. Please report to the frontline, General Larsen wants to try and break the deadlock." A voice over the comms said. "I repeat, we're going over the trench."

"Well, there's your answer." The lance corporal quipped, clipping his canteen to his belt. "Let's move, squad."

_**...**_

_**The XCOM Frontline Trench - 14km to Fort Progeny**_

_**Private Czarniak**_

Unnerving. That's how Arkady described how General Larsen looked right now. He was wearing a bloodied bandage over his eyes. It looked like he couldn't see at all, but he acted like he wasn't blinded, given how he never tripped or how he kept facing the right person when talking. When he was finished confering with his officers, he finally addressed his troops, bringing an omni-tool up. Even in the crowded, uncomfortable conditions of the trench they were in, no soldier complained as the general talked.

"We're here, right in our little trench," The general highlighted the eastern part of No Man's Land blue. "The turians are hunkered down over at the other side, as you surely would know by now." The western area of No Man's Land blared red. "Extremely heavy resistance awaits us if we go up this trench," The general gestured above him, above the trench and into the open plains. "We've tried to bulldoze our way to the turian lines, but all of our attempts have failed so far, but don't despair. Not anymore."

"I've recently received word from Omen team. They've reported that the aliens are hiding something important, all right." The general replaced the map displayed from his omni-tool to a live feed from Omen.

"We're still in position, sir. You want us to fall back?" Omen Leader asked. His helmeted face dominated the screen.

Larsen shook his head. "Negative, Omen. We're preparing for the assault on your position. I want you to show the troops what you found down there."

"Well, roger that." The soldier moved a hand to the side of his helmet and pressed a knob. Instantly, the view changed from his head to a view of the interiors of a room. The room was positively gigantic. Its walls were made of steel, it had no windows and computers and machinery were practically at every corner of the room. Dead turian soldiers lie on the ground as blood pooled over their corpses, while dead human soldiers lie neatly stacked on one corner of the room. Destroyed turrets could also be seen and plasma burns and bullet holes litter the It was a sterile, gray-painted, gigantic room with no windows, blindingly heavy lights and computers and machinery scattered all over it. Dead turians soldiers were haphazardly stacked on one corner of the room and some dead human soldiers could also be seen, but these were nothing compared to the object at the center of the room. It was an intact prothean beacon.

"Just after we jammed all communications from coming out of this base, we heard from the alien PA system that the leaders are ordering a considerable amount of their soldiers to come and guard this thing, sir. They're also expecting reinforcements, but we intercepted their hails and jammed them." Omen Leader informed. "We came here as fast as we could, but they've already set up some turrets and barricades to block us. We took care of them, but I lost some of my men."

"You did good, Omen." Larsen said. "If you're able, I want the you and the rest of your squad to hold positions. Once we breach the facility, you'll be assisting us in securing the base. You copy?"

"Yes, sir. Omen out." The soldier cut comms, and Larsen's omni-tool went blank.

"From now on, our objective is to secure the object as well as the rest of the base." The general stated to his men, powering his omni-tool down. "We are not to use any explosives inside the base's perimeter. The director wants everything minus alien personnel completely intact. Am I understood?"

Arkady and his fellow soldiers all did their yes sirs, doing a salute to accompany it.

"Very good. Now, if I'm not mistaken, now's the time for our attack. First of all, I want the Templar-MECs to be our vanguard; they'll be in the front, shields raised and swords at the ready. The fire support MECs will be standing right behind the TMECs, constantly providing grenade launcher fire, or if possible, trading small arms fire with the aliens. The Hellstriders, because they're such big targets, are very vulnerable out there in the open. They'll be skirting around the sides, just after the main force had breached the alien trench. By this time, the aliens would be too distracted by threats closer to them to pay attention to the mectopods. Berserkers, you'll be going with the Hellstriders. Last, but not least, I'd like the augers, the psi-ops troopers and the regulars to keep behind the MEC troopers. They'll be in charge of repulsing enemy skirmishers and flankers. Any questions?"

Larsen ripped off his bandages when nobody answered, revealing his eyes, which have fully regenerated from their wounds. "Hm. Good." He donned his helmet.

_**...**_

_**The Hierarchy Trench - Drekplaats**_

_**July 06th, 2157 - 1410 hours**_

_**Sergeant First Class Leonellus Severus - Predator squad**_

The alien, after having a mass-accelerated marksman's bullet penetrate his helmet's eye socket, was thrown back into his trench, undoubtedly dead. _That should tell them to keep their big heads down._ Severus thought to himself as he waited for his rifle to cool down. Peering back into his scope seconds later, he silently waited for another of the aliens who thought that poking their heads out of their trench to look would be a good idea.

_Come on, you bastards_. The sergeant mentally goaded his foes. _You've all got heads the size of coffee tables._

It seems that the aliens have finally learned their lesson. Not one of them even dared to show an inch of their bodies outside their trench after several minutes. Bored, the sergeant entertained himself by hovering his scope over the giant alien walkers lumbering behind the enemy lines to observe them, which have been nicknamed by the soldiers as the "demons". They were too far away to be fired on by rockets and too agile to be targeted by artillery with reliable precision, but they seemed content to be that way. They never even stepped foot in No-Man's-Land as of yet after the alien footsoldiers failed their initial assault.

Wise, Severus thought. Even with extremely durable armored plating, they'd be prioritized by every idiot with a missile launcher within one hundred and fifty meters. They'd be ripped to shreds by massed artillery strikes before they could even get close.

Severus wondered what it's like to be within close proximity to one of the alien walkers. They looked quite frightening with how their whole bodies are designed, with a dull, urban camouflage paintjob, horn-like protrusions coming out of their heads and curved, powerful legs that seemed to have the feet designed to look like hooves. Not to mention, their frames are practically bristling with weaponry. However, standing several kilometers from the monsters was one thing that Severus was glad to have.

Suddenly, he saw movement coming out from the bottom edge of his scope. Instantly, Severus had his rifle pointed at his target's head and fired. He did his actions so fast, that he didn't realize what he's really firing at.

It was one of the smaller alien walkers - brutes, as the troopers have unofficially designated them. Before Severus' bullet, and several hundred other marksmen's bullets, could even touch the brute, the projectiles already had vaporized when they made contact with the alien's shield. Soon, several others of the alien walkers began climbing out of the enemy trench, all brandishing electrified shields and giant swords.

_Ha! What are they planning to do with _those?" The turian sniper asked himself, chuckling. He stopped looking over his scope and looked down his sniping perch to address his fellows.

"Hey, wake up, you barefaced younglings!" He shouted down, disrupting a gambling game in process. "Man the machine-guns, get the turrets working! They're coming back for another go!" The men immediately snapped into attention. They hurriedly drew their weapons and ran over to the frontlines to man their earlier firing positions.

Severus lightly scoffed before going back over his perch. When he looked over his scope once more, he couldn't stop the terrified gasp that escaped his mouth.

The aliens aren't looking to make recon run like they've done before. Looks like the aliens leaders have seen enough and decided to get their offensive going. Standing in front of the alien lines are the brutes. They were holding their shields in front of them, but their swords were sheathed, replaced by monstrous assault rifles. Just when things couldn't get any worse, the brutes began to return fire with the Hierarchy soldiers. Turians have the advantage of the cover their trench provided them, but the aliens have their brutes to soak up damage, which isn't very hard for them, from the looks of things.

Severus, with seemingly no targets to shoot that would actually be damaged by his measly sniper rifle, began to have his scope wander over the battlefield, looking over the actions of his comrades. When the brutes have finally reached halfway across the two opposing trenches, that's when Severus heard the order to fire artillery strikes, followed by a quick pincer maneuver by turian footsoldiers to finish off any of the few surviving brutes. The turian marksman immediately had his scope hover over the alien walkers once more to see the fireworks. He felt a rush of excitement when he heard the shriek of a friendly bombardment, about to deliver a swift punishment to the aliens for their impertinence.

However, much to Severus' shock and disappointment, the alien walkers never disappeared in a shower of explosives. The friendly shells and missiles, as they descended to deliver the killing blow, seemed to be influenced by an invisible force; going off-course and exploding harmlessly in an unoccupied area of the battlefield. That's when more of the aliens hurriedly charged over the trench, supplementing their mechanized brethren, plasma weapons brought to bear and bayonets intimidatingly fixed. Severus couldn't help but feel extreme anger when he saw his comrades' flanking maneuver fail spectacularly when they failed to account for enemy reinforcements. Their positions were immediately rooted out, and then they were mercilessly cut down by enemy energy weapons fire, having failed to accomplish anything but to die pointless deaths.

The sergeant already had his rifle put to work when viable targets came. He always made the point to shoot for the head, as his bullets do nothing at any other area. More than a few enemy soldiers fell to Severus, but there were always more. When the aliens were already within spitting distance of the Hierarchy trench, several of Severus' fellows suddenly either turned on each other inexplicably, or ran away from the frontlines in a panic, screaming about voices in their heads as the cowards ran for their lives. Luckily for Severus, he never experienced any voices in his head. It's simply imposs-

_**YOU THINK OF OUR CAPABILITIES AS "IMPOSSIBLE"? **_

Immediately, Severus found himself lying down on his perch, his rifle cluttering uselessly as it was thrown backwards. The turian marskman shook his head and tried to compose himself, but-

_**YOUR FELLOW SOLDIERS BRAVELY SACRIFICED THEIR LIVES ON THE FRONTLINES,**_

_**WHILE YOU COWER AND HIDE BEHIND SAFETY, LIKE THE WEAKLING YOU ARE.**_

When Severus head the words "cower" and "weakling", he immediately gained control of most of his body as his temper got hold of him. He tried to ignore the forces inside his mind as he reached for his rifle. Going back to his firing position, Severus began to pick off alien troopers once more, but his aim isn't what it used to be. Now, he kept making mistakes that he'd have to actively _try_ to make when he was his competent self. Gritting his teeth as he waited for his overheated rifle to cool down, Severus tried to gain full control of his bod-

_**YOU TRY TO RESIST ME? VERY IMPRESSIVE. **_

_**IT IS OF NO CONSEQUENCE, HOWEVER.**_

_**YOU AND ALL YOUR KIND WILL NEVER LEAVE THIS PLANET ALIVE.**_

_**YOU ARE MERELY AN OBSTACLE IN OUR WAY, TO BE BLOTTED OUT LIKE FLAMES IN THE DARKNESS.**_

Severus opened his eyes. He was on the floor again. His control over his own body is now gone. He's useless.

_**I WILL GIVE YOU ONE LAST THING TO BEHOLD BEFORE THE INEVITABLE.**_

_**RISE, ALIEN. RISE AND BEHOLD OUR MIGHT. **_

Abruptly, control is now fully restored to Severus. He took up his position again, confident that he's finally free from the force's grasp. But before he could finally put himself at ease, one last word was heard from the voices:

_**DESPAIR.**_

"I think not." The marksman said out loud, before putting an eye over his rifle scope to resume his duties. What he saw, indeed, made him despair.

The turian trench is already on the verge of being overrun. The brutes have broken through and are now actively engaging turian soldiers in brutal melee combat while the alien regulars stood back and took potshots at their enemies. Things look already bleak, but then they came.

Roaring in fury, armored figures began to descend from the sky on jump packs, with what is essentially swords which are equipped with saw-like powered teeth that ran along a single bladed edge on their clutches. Turian soldiers, already in the process of breaking, were no match for these berserkers as their ranks were quite literally ripped to bloody pieces, their armor quite helpless to stop the blades that rent them asunder. But that was before the demons came from the flanks and effortlessly annihilated clusers of turians on their own.

Severus gulped. His position, while far from the frontlines, is a very dangerous position indeed. He unbolted his rifle from its perch and attached it to his back. The turian marksman was ready to leave, when suddenly, something crashed into his perch, knocking him down. Severus flipped himself over and found one of the berserkers standing over him, electrified steel claws coated in blue fluids adorning his gauntlets.

Sergeant Severus, along with nearly seventy percent of fourteen thousand, never left Drekplaats alive.

* * *

**CODEX: _I. Hellfire_**

A product of a peculiar mixture of a sample of Meld aged a century, refined jellied Elerium and a whiff of Element Zero, this compound was a recent addition to the Federation's arsenal of weaponry, but was already used for civilian purposes since the 2060s under the civilian name of "Redactor". If used as fuel for a flame-spewing device, victims or objects were not _just _horribly burned, but their organic and synthetic components would also be eaten away down to their most basic form. XCOM agents favored Hellfire for its effectiveness in destroying any evidence to the paramilitary organization's existence, or other objects that their director had deemed fit for incineration. Its effectiveness for combat uses had been debated throughly among both the Federation and XCOM's military circles. Proponents of Hellfire for use in combat claim that the compound is a weapon useful for any type of enemy, whether it be infantry or armor, saving several soldiers' lives when they would've otherwise been lost. Opponents claim that Hellfire leaves their victims to die in a horrific, agonizing way, leaving nothing of them in the end, before going as far as to say that the compound itself is "inhumane", and should be banned from further use.

Disadvantages of Hellfire in combat include that the mixture is often quite ineffective when used in an open environment, and the fires themselves are fairly easy to put out with the slightest effort, which is offset by the extreme amount of pain the victim was forced to undergo, leaving them helpless and reliant on external sources to put their fires out. Hellfire also takes a fairly long time to eat away inorganic material, making using them against hostile armor only effective when combined with time.

_**II. "Iconoclast" Purge Trooper Environmental Exoframe Mk. I**_

Exclusive to XCOM forces is the Iconoclast Exoframe. This suit of Ilyushinite, armor is designed for use by Meld-augmented agents, as the suit's systems directly interface with whatever augs the agent possessed in his or her body, further boosting his or her capabilities in combat. The Iconoclast's gauntlets were typically fitted with a plasma cannon and a close combat weapon of some sort, and both can be hidden or retracted back into their gauntlet form. Since this suit of armor is exceptionally heavy, its use is often limited to purge trooper duties, as most agents issued an Iconoclast for long hours planetside will find him or herself heavily encumbered, only useful as a big lump of cover for his/her unexhausted comrades. When in space, the suit's VI systems automatically seals the armor shut, rendering it completely vacuum sealed. When the suit detects that the environment isn't space anymore, it automatically unseals itself so that medikits, combat stims and restorative mists could have their usual effects on wounded agents. Lastly, agents have been known to customize their Iconoclast to accommodate their preferred way of fighting.

More recently, the Iconoclast Exoframe had received upgrades to its environmental protection hardware, allowing users to survive in heavily irradiated or blizzard-infested environments with ease (assuming the agent wearing the Iconoclast is strong enough to be able to take his/her armor planetside for the latter). Common complaints from XCOM operatives typically include the Iconoclast's incapability to filter out Thin Man poison or other, more similar agents out of the armor, resulting in death or severe injury to the wearer.

_**III. Hellstrider Mk. VI Mectopods**_

Since the (mostly) phasing-out of the tank, sectopods have taken the center stage when it came to armored fighting vehicles suited to frontline roles. Prized for their extreme durability and ridiculous amount of firepower, the sectopods have been in the Federation and XCOM's arsenal for more than a century since their implementation. The same statement could be applied to the Mechanized Exoskeleton Cybersuit. In 2083, Federation and XCOM military scientists, trying to find a way to create a weapon that's more powerful and resilient that sectopods and more dextrous and versatile than MEC troopers, had made the decision to combine the two juggernauts' best traits within a single mechanized unit that made use of a human pilot, much like both the former and the latter. The result is the Hellstrider Mectopod.

Armed with a giant electrified claw on the right hand, a fusion lance on the left, a plasma assault cannon on one shoulder and a missile battery on another, the Hellstrider is basically a walking armory. Hellstrider pilots were hand-picked from the best fighter pilots available, and the pilots themselves were thrown into the most grueling, most backbreaking sort of training that allows them to pilot Hellstriders with machinelike precision and fluidity. The mectopods themselves were intentionally made to look like demons and monsters to invoke a primal fear amongst the enemy's ranks, making psychological warfare another weapon to be utilized by the Hellstrider pilot.

_**IV. The Second Battle for Shanxi - statistics**_

Combatants: Federation Navy, XCOM Detachment S:17/Jarrakus Mondranor Legion, Draius Ferlodinus Legion

Estimated turian vessel count: 700+ frigates, 400+ cruisers, 4 dreadnoughts

Total human vessel count: 284 Charleston-class frigates, 318 Williamsburg-class cruisers, 52 Luciana-class hiveships, 73 Thanatos-class devilships, 7 Fredrickson-class dreadnoughts, 1 Cthulhu-class dreadnought, 1 Seeker Ship

_**V. Operation: Slumbering Titan - statistics**_

Combatants: XCOM Detachment Y:71/Drekplaats Planetary Defense Force

Estimated turian navy vessels: 50+ frigates, 200+ cruisers, 1 space station

Total XCOM navy vessels: 19 Dublin-class podbearers, 1 Tranquil-class hunter-killer carrier

Estimated turian military personnel: 14,000+

Total XCOM field personnel: 3,650 agents

_**VI. Hunter-killer carriers**_

These gigantic carriers vessels exclusive to XCOM are outfitted to be most useful in situations that necessitated the use of massed fighter screens equipped with EMP cannons to render enemy spaceborne vessels fit for swift capture and dismantlement. Almost as difficult to make as ordinary dreadnoughts, only less than a hundred of these vessels are within the XCOM navy. Typically, these carriers carry more than ten thousand crewmen or more, and about several tens of thousands of unmanned fighter drones that served as the "steelshields" of the manned fighters.

_**VII. Berserkers**_

Also exclusive to XCOM and several other paramilitary organizations, these "soldiers" were in fact hardened criminals, overly-aggressive agitators, rebels, pirates, terrorists, fringe world homesteaders who wanted "independence" from the Federation and former EXALT agents that were captured, sent for death row/life imprisonment, and were "rescued" by XCOM recruiters looking for expendable, unthinking troopers to throw in the meatgrinder in place of regular agents. These troopers are heavily augmented, and are only ever "recruited" in times of war or conflict, and are constantly pumped full of combat stims and other drugs to supplement their strength and heighten their aggression towards enemy forces - human or otherwise. As a result of their augs, they are capable of living for several centuries without dying of old age. They are kept from going rogue by extreme mental conditionings and inhibitions, and for extra protection, these soldiers are always in close proximity with a Gamma-class psionic or above.

It's a fact that most of the active berserkers today are in fact a hundred years old, and in times of peace, are kept imprisoned and sedated in inert Meld vats in bases, vessels and FOBs, to be released only when the call for war has been issued. It's expected that once these berserkers have all been killed off, XCOM will start recruiting from the Federation's local death rows once more.

Very rarely, a berserker will be given command of his own squad of his/her fellow berserkers (and even rarer, regular XCOM agents), if he/she had proven him/herself capable of leading. These berserkers often were berserkers only in name, having reformed themselves enough to think clearly, without drugs to cloud their minds.

_**...**_

This whole chapter is made to showcase the weapons tech humanity had developed between 2015 and 2157. As you can see, it's loaded with mindless violence and intestines. Then again, that doesn't sound too bad...

The mass-scale politicking and the Council races' reactions will be making an appearance in the next chapter or the next. I don't know which.

So, to all you WH40K fans out there, the purge troopers are an obvious homage to space marines in terminator armor, with jump packs in place of teleporters. I've even made the whole infiltration segment read vaguely (very vaguely. There were no genestealers and actual corridor-crawling) like Space Hulk. And as a bonus, Hellstriders are basically what a dreadnought (the combat walker, not the ship) is if it's got four main armaments instead of two, doesn't require a near-dead pilot, and is a bit bigger and agile as well. However, I got the inspiration from long hours of playing Titanfall.

And... of course, if you think giving the Old One an official name that's taken straight from H.P. Lovecraft is a bad idea for everyone, I've _also_ given her a "preferred name" that's taken from a certain franchise that involves a homicidally insane sentient AI that involuntarily makes you run obstacle courses. Time will tell if this serious case of tempting fate will go like most cases do. At least she's friendly.

And another thing, the Drekplaats segments are written to resemble World War I. Trenches, barbed wire (sort of), poppy fields, no-man's-land, machine-guns, mud and such? Yeah.

I almost forgot, like I've written, this chapter is hastily cranked out in the middle of school. Forgive me if you see more than a few errors. I'll have them fixed when I'm able. Thank you.

* * *

tco99123: "The obvious question is why did the protheans mention that the reapers destroyed them but then failed to mention that the relays are their invention and also a trap? That change was a little pointless."

Obvious? The only thing obvious about it is that it'll ruin the whole goddamn ME story.

"Too many turian females. There is a theme in ME stories to include turian females where none have been observed before. I don't know why."

What. It appears your definition of "too many" is one named turian female and one unnamed, throwaway mention. I don't know what to say to that. May I ask, do turians have some sort of aversion to their females serving in the armed forces like us humans do back then? Are the turians sexist? Are the turian females like the krogan, where their absence in military matters is justified? Or are they like the salarian females, where their rareness also justifies their absence in the game proper? No? Then I'm chalking their absence up to Bioware not making any models for turian females, or their writers forgot about them altogether and just couldn't be bothered to put them in the games, minus that ME3 expansion. In short, I really don't see anything wrong with putting turian women in the ranks of the turian navy, and I don't know anything about that theme you're talking about. I don't read in this site, I just write. Find something else in this story to poke legitimate errors or flaws on.

"What was the point in standing _**toe to toe**_ with a vastly superior force. Weak strategy and not believable. Would've made more sense for federation forces to retreat after the first salvo."

This is the part where I stopped taking your review seriously. Tell me, have you even _read _the damned story? The eighteen Federation vessels attacked from _the flank, _not stood "toe to toe" with a whole legion of turian vessels. And I thought I've already made it clear on chapter 1 that despite what you think, I _do_ have some thrice-damned common sense.

"Weak strategy and not believable"? Let me repeat your earlier statement for you: _**  
**_

_**"I have no knowledge of XCOM."**_

Don't try to lecture me on something you know nil about. There's nothing I hate more than a smartass.

Since you don't know anything about XCOM and what happened during the events of EU/EW, most of your review rang hollow. Did you know that the XCOM:EU's humans expect their foes to be much more advanced than they are? To sum it up, the humans don't know how damaging their weapons are to the turians, and going by their experiences in the game, their opinions would be quite low. Going with this, they'd think that the damage they'll do in a single salvo would be very minimal, so they _won't _go and fire a single salvo, but several more. And once they found that the damage they did was devastating instead of mildly damaging, the humans, having ZERO experience with spaceborne ship-based combat, would naturally fire again, completely lured by the sudden turn of events and completely unaware that the turians could ignore morale shocks and could also respond to unanticipated hostile action very rapidly.

As a result, things do not go according to plan for humans, but that's the bloody point, besides. The only thing giving the turians an occasional edge (and I'd like it that way. I hate stomps) against the humans is the humans' inexperience and their superior numbers. Plus, the humans know absolutely nothing about the turians. Don't expect a race with no knowledge of spaceborne combat tactics to suddenly act like they know everything there is to know about their enemy's capabilities and weaknesses. Humans are not Gary Kasparov.

Your third segment of the second review _did_ intrigue me, but your suggestions seem too unorthodox. I'm looking to write something fun and easy to read, not a meticulously written, pointlessly long doorstopper. I've already tried my hand on that sort of writing, but I'd very much prefer not to go back to it.

Selias: No, it/she's not like a friendly Reaper. It's like something out of H.P. Lovecraft's mind. Well, at least it/she _is_ friendly.

Parselmaster: If you don't mind, allow me to remind you (and everyone too), it's not a Reaper. Just a reminder.

the black sun 21: Well, I won't have humans be stomping every other alien race with complete impunity.

Lord Sia: It's a giant Seeker.

Kami no Raijin: No, it's not a Reaper.

Rhavis: Fresh batch of baked 40K-based goodness right here in this chapter. More on the way.

Lazyguy90: Yes! THAT's where I got the idea for the Old One from! Seriously, I had some good times playing Soviets, infuriating my friends with giant squid spam. Oh, and if the situation calls for it, why not? I've already included the chainfist in this chapter, and I'm planning on giving berserkers chainswords (I kinda already did, but they're not very prominent). But it might go too excessive with thunder hammers. Maybe as a MEC close combat weapon, but they've already got Kinetic Strike Modules. Suggestions?

Shadowcub: Indeed. Though a lot of people would like everyday life to be the same as it was, so people would like to keep secrets away from the public so they could get on as normal. It's not my decision to have XCOM do that, by the way. That's from The Bureau, made by 2K.

thepkrmgc: To clarify, I wrote that EXALT had been getting more and more aggressive with their frequent attacks. That means that EXALT has been plaguing the Federation and XCOM continuously over the years, not preparing for a massive all-out attack. Oh, and since humans have energy weapons that completely bypass shields, and turians rely on their kinetic barriers too much, and as such, have very thin armored plating, a human armada against a turian armada would completely wipe the floor with the turians. Like I've written above, the only things preventing the turians from being completely annihilated is their tactics, superior numbers and vastly wider experience with spaceborne engagements. Not to mention humanity's unfamiliarity with spaceborne ship-to-ship battles.

Commissar Critical: What?

Wondering Muse: The Old One is the _only_ sentient AI in all of the Federation. All the drone fighters, cyberdisks, some sectopods and seekers are all powered by insentient AIs - VIs, if you will. So in short, yes. She's the largest sentient tech the humans made in this story.

Batarians are like North Korea. Nobody likes them, they do horrible things to their people and everybody wants to take them down, but the Council races/the free world can't very well do that because of rules and other meaningless stuff. I, for one, hate North Korea. Especially the leaders. You can expect something very bloody to the batarians in the future. VERY BLOODY INDEED.

I have a plan for quarians. They, in my plans, wouldn't be in an "alliance" with humans like most other fics go have them do, but at least since they're not in the Council, their relationship with humans is a bit more warmer than the Council races do. Still, I wrote humans to be very xenophobic in this story. Don't expect them to instantly take out their "alien bros" out to the movies at least until a few decades of contact, though.

Reviews are appreciated, I never really cared for their length.

thepkrmgc: The turians have a disadvantage in ground battles. If they're facing XCOM, then they've got an experience disadvantage (because XCOM's been in the alien-killing business for centuries), and a massive technological disadvantage (obviously), but they've got advantages with numbers and familiarity with their environments. If they're facing the Federation forces, they've only got disadvantages with technology, because Fed forces aren't really as elite or well-equipped as XCOM agents are, but they compensate with many more numbers. Think of XCOM as special forces, and Feds as the regular army for reference.

However, if the humans don't have the tech they do now, or they have tech on par with turians, a turian armada versus a human armada will definitely go with turians victorious. Humans don't have anything to their navy's belt since, well, ever. They're like new recruits to a war they know little about.

Diplomacy should come next chapter. Or maybe the next if I get carried out with VIOLENCE. Seriously, I love violence.

ShadowCub: I don't know if you even read my countless monologues at the bottom of every chapter. You're in the wrong neighborhood.

el mano: Don't know anything about haters because I spend little time in this site, but I can assure you, I'll never stop writing. Even if I disappear for more than a month. Something bad must've happened to me then, or I got carried away with a more entertaining form of media.

bigred877: I'll have the humans assault a _very_ important target next chapter, I think. It's their way of making a statement.

Alex Rushing 5: I'll have the Old One invade Japan, too! Hehe, I'm joking, I'd rather not see that.

BloodLordShade: Are you talking about the "Hellstrider" or the "Worldsmith"? The Hellstrider, I got the idea from dreadnoughts from 40K, but the inspiration from Titanfall. The Worldsmith, I took the idea from those annoying little robots called Seekers in XCOM:EW, and Red Alert 2's ship-strangling giant squid.

rinshi264: Sorry to say, but I won't glass Palaven because that's too unrealistic. To compensate for this "loss" and to lift your spirits, I'll have the humans invade something very important in the next chapter. Very important indeed.

hornet07: Nah, don't worry. The turians have 37 dreadnoughts that I know of, and over the course of this war, about six have been destroyed or captured. I think they're still fit for combat, despite being winded.

NathanHale2: Turians didn't kill hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of humans in Shanxi, you know. Thanks to Williams' quick thinking, no civies were killed. And no, humans don't need a holy war to win a war brought on by a stupid misunderstanding. Can't you see the irony of humans successfully defending themselves from monsters, but then when the time came, they became monsters themselves? In short, no. I don't want the humans going on a genocide on aliens. Not that they can take on the whole galaxy themselves if they wanted to. Humans have extremely superior technology to ME races, but they have limited manpower. They can't successfully hold on to multiple fronts at once with what men they have. It's gonna be like Germany trying to take on all of Europe back in Hitler's day.

Funny, if you look further into EU's situation room, they said that the human casualties throughout the whole ethereal-induced war only amounted to "thousands", not even enough to put a major dent in a medium-sized city. But that might just be an oversight by 2K.

Blazeknight26: No Palaven invasions. Too unrealistic and unbelievable.

Derain von Harken: Bloody hell. This. This is the review I was looking for. Suffice it to say, your review is the very best and very informative (and very entertaining) that's offered to me so far.

I specifically made translators for humans just for the sole reason of avoiding mind melds. Even if I don't read much in this site, I know that "first contact mind melds" are already done to death. For the diplomatic parts, I think it'll just be a very long exchange of information on both sides of the coin, with psionic humans being part of the human diplomatic force, of course.

Don't worry, I pay attention to my story. That segment wouldn't be as boring as I wrote it here.

One thing of note, you _will_ see more than just mentions of how Gifted humans are integrated into the current human society. I just haven't had time to think about them yet, but it looks like you've already done it for me. For that, I give you my thanks. Also, psionics only influence the mind. They don't influence matter like biotics do, so the only err, "extra stimulation" couples will be doing with their Gift would be to exchange mental images and such.

Very sharp, you are. You'll see in the future.

CommissarPancakes: Sweet Emperor's mullet, Kreliv'vartoth! You killed him! And he was such a nice daemon too. He brought me raspberries every now and then, you know. Then again, those raspberries tasted like blood and bone a little bit too much for my liking.

Anyway, for the purge troopers, no. They're not sent en-masse because augmented (very elite, highly-trained, super _super_ soldiers) soldiers are hard to come by. Instead, they're sent in out in small numbers _discretely_ to a disabled enemy ship to kill the crew, with the maximum purgers assigned to a single target being a hundred and a half. The purgers are typically dropped from a stealth hiveship from around the enemy fleet's back, or at least in close proximity to the target vessel.

They're never sent out to "de-crew" enemy vessels smaller than large cruisers, because the smaller ones are most likely in the thick of combat, where the fighting is much heavier, and they're never sent out before the heavy fighting has broken out between the two opposing parties. The other reason they're sent to breach larger ships is that because the vessels are typically at the back of any fleet, with only fighter screens and point-defense cannons to protect them from close range attacks. If the purgers are assigned support like fighters or drones and such, they'd be easily detected, making their jobs harder when the breach the hull, or infiltrate the enemy ship via airlock.

Since GARDIAN batteries are programmed to shoot down fighter-sized targets, the purge troopers' small, man-sized (relatively) profile allows them to be ignored by the auto-targeting systems the GARDIAN has. This can be countered by manually controlling the GARDIAN battery. This might change in the future, though. The human-turian war has just begun. Expect the turians to develop countermeasures to purge troopers in future chapters.

*Sees laspistol turn into a potent anti-daemon weapon, engraved with the words "_The Emperor's Peace"*_

Now, look what you've done!

Abaddon953: Oh, you'll see.

ultimate idiot: Indeed, but that's only because of tradition. However, don't expect Admiral Aureliana to be riddled with bullets next chapter. I've got too many plans in store for her just for her to be killed off.

SoKing: You thought wrong. WH40K shields work NOTHING like ME's. From my long experience with the franchise, I know that aside from the Tau Empire, there's no personal shields in 40K (well, there's the Rosarius and the Iron Halo for the Imperium, but the technology that makes them work is poorly understood), only ship-based shields called Void Shields. They work by displacing ranged projectiles that touch them. Not even close to how ME's kinetic barriers work.

Where did you read _that_? Soldiers in 40K use melee weapons because they're so goddamn powerful, and often, very brutal. Works wonders for enemy morale. No, they don't use melee weapons because of enemy personal shields, because they have often have none, relying on armor exclusively. On the other hand, Tau personal shields (and Imperial trinkets that operated with "conversion fields") work _extremely_ differently to ME's. There's different variants that differ in use, but I can't be bothered to write them. Too many.

Okay, I'm confused. Are you talking about ME personal shields and how melee weapons are very ineffective against them? If you are, then keep in mind that Shepard in-game has the capacity to punch people. Even with shields, punches are very effective. I regularly beat up shielded geth with mere punches alone, and they obviously die. I know that punching isn't a melee weapon, but it uses the same principle. Furthermore, XCOM and Federation melee weapons aren't _just_ melee weapons alone. They're always, ALWAYS coated in energy. As we all know, energy ignores kinetic barriers.

Yes, I know how mass-accelerated weapons work in ME. I always do my research. Since the 150 year gap between 2015 and 2157, humans, as I've already written them (damn it, this is becoming my catchphrase), have been improving their armor-making technologies to make exoframes that can withstand hits from damn near everything in their current arsenal, railguns (the ones the MEC troopers used back then) included. Isn't that segment that I've written in the first chapter entailing that humans have made their standard infantryman armor to be resistant to prothean projectile weapons (the weapons that turians use) enough? In short, rapid-firing railguns aren't that powerful compared to what humans have for protection. They're sub-par at best.

The chainsaw doesn't cut through the bulkhead by being too slow. That's counter-productive. I wrote the "slow" part to stop certain people from bothering me about the chainsaw being extremely fast, which means that it should've registered to the dreadnought's kinetic barriers. And that's when they disregard that the chainsaw's already enveloped in an energy field. Which they almost always do.

If you read it as such, then it's your imagination's incapabilities that are to blame. I, on the other hand, can imagine my descriptions being utterly terrifying, not the sissified, cartoonish, pitchfork-wielding devil you probably cooked up in your head. If it's any consolation to you, not all Hellstriders look like that. They're just made to look like what their human creators thought were terrifying.

And have you forgotten about EXALT, mate? Since aliens haven't appeared in a century and the turian-human war is only very recent, FELLOW HUMANS were humanity's most frequent enemies, not aliens. Naturally, since there's no aliens to fight, Hellstriders are made to look like what EXALT agents, who were humans, fear. Lastly, how can anyone, even aliens, not even be slightly afraid of a tall, lumbering, demonic walking armory? Or more accurately, a tall, lumbering, demonic walking armory that's _hostile_ to them? I'm familiar enough with turians to know that at least that could give them pause.


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